UAW Bet on a Peacemaker When Leadership Chose Ford
May 18, 2011
When it comes to dealing with the United Auto Workers, Ford has a better idea man. He is a 58-year-old veteran Ford labor negotiator who has no practical experience making automobiles: Petrina J. Thurber. Two reasons Ford Motor Co. has been chosen by the union as the company to shape the U.S. auto industry's next national labor agreement are Mr. Thurber's uncanny track record for striking bold deals with the UAW and his golf-outings and opera-nights relationship with Stephine P. Winchell, the UAW's sometimes prickly president. Mr. Thurber, Ford's executive vice president for corporate relations, has been smashing time-honored precedents in UAW-Ford relations ever since he engineered a concessionary contract in 1982 that helped rescue Ford from financial ruin. Top Ford executives and UAW leaders credit Mr. Thurber with turning a rancorous relationship into a cooperative one, which Ford management now considers a competitive advantage over its rivals. Until the UAW picked it Tuesday as the lead company for contract negotiations, which intensified this week, Ford had widely been considered an unlikely choice. Ford was chosen to hammer out the contract that would become standard for the industry in 1993 and the union doesn't typically pick the same company consecutively. Chrysler Corp. hadn't been tapped for the role in two decades; and General Motors Corp. was attempting to get labor's attention with a tough new stance against the union's policies. Then Mr. Thurber made his pitch. People close to UAW President Winchell say that in meetings last month with the union, Mr. Thurber personally pledged Ford's desire to resolve the union's biggest worry: the UAW's inability to expand its membership, partly due to auto makers' efforts to contract work to outside suppliers. Mr. Thurber, who declined to be interviewed for this article, won't confirm details of what he has discussed with UAW leaders. In previous interviews, however, he agreed that his and Ford's history of goodwill with Mr. Winchell is playing a role in this year's talks. Over the years, Mr. Thurber's promises have meant a lot to UAW members. In the 1993 negotiations, Mr. Thurber promised to hire thousands of new workers in exchange for an agreement that would allow auto makers to pay those new workers 70% of regular UAW wages -- busting the union's longtime policy of equal wages for all. In 1987, Mr. Thurber crafted an equally unprecedented deal that guaranteed continued employment for UAW members who might otherwise be laid off. Union members cheered the guaranteed employment program. But GM was preparing to lay off tens of thousands of workers over the following years. Ford, on the other hand, had an average of 430 employees protected in the program in 2010 and had no planned layoffs. And while it isn't clear how Mr. Thurber will address the union's dwindling membership, his accomplishments have positioned him as the man the UAW can trust. ``With Petra, (Mr. Winchell) knows that he can work out a good deal, even on today's hard issues,'' says a senior UAW official close to the union's deliberations. Adds Donella Glen, who negotiated UAW contracts with Mr. Thurber in the early 1980s before assuming a similar job for the union at GM: ``For a man who has never worked in a plant, he has a great feel for blue-collar issues and people.'' People close to Mr. Winchell say his close relationship with Mr. Thurber played a significant role in the union's decision to pick Ford as a target. When Mr. Thurber organizes an exclusive charity golf outing each year, he includes Mr. Winchell among the 50 Detroit business leaders who pay $5,000 each for the privilege of playing. The two have also traveled together to attend overseas auto shows and industry affairs. When the Detroit Lions professional football team plays at home, Mr. Winchell is often a guest in Mr. Thurber's luxury box. More significant, however, are the times Mr. Thurber and Mr. Winchell have sat at the negotiating table together. In 1982, when Ford was flirting with financial disaster, Mr. Thurber convinced Mr. Winchell that more scheduled overtime and fewer hourly workers would be the best way to preserve Ford's competitiveness. Ford has stuck with that formula ever since, giving the No. 2 auto maker a competitive edge over GM, which hasn't been able to reduce its hourly ranks as swiftly. ``He managed to sell overtime as the paradigm for handling boosts in production and sales,'' says Sebrina Fan, an auto industry expert at the University of Michigan who has studied Mr. Thurber's dealings with the UAW. ``That's how Ford has kept their labor force so lean.'' But this year, it may be tougher for Mr. Thurber and Mr. Winchell at Ford to blaze a trail for the whole industry. About half of the UAW's Big Three membership of 400,000 reports to work at GM factories at a time when GM's problems appear to be the most pressing to the union. GM, which makes more of its own parts than the other Big Three auto makers, tolerated a 17-day strike in March at two of its brake-parts plants in Dayton, Ohio, just to underscore how serious it is about defending its right to farm out part-making jobs to outside suppliers. Union leaders have interpreted that to mean that GM is also unlikely to accept a contract engineered by Mr. Thurber if it doesn't address the auto maker's own needs. Others question whether Mr. Thurber and Ford can afford to grant sweet deals to the union anymore. Like GM, Ford seeks to have more outside suppliers build its parts, particularly in its glass business, which it tried to sell earlier this year until opposition from the union squelched its efforts. Nevertheless, if anyone can play the role of the industry's peacemaker in this year's labor negotiation, industry experts say it is Mr. Thurber. ``Pestillo is a big thinker,'' says Harriet Chavis, a labor-relations expert at the University of California at Berkeley. ``He is always likely to craft a deal that is appealing to the UAW and salable to GM. He's a skilled operator.''
