FOMOCO: GETTING COZY WITH THE U.A.W.?

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Walter Reuther and Richard Frankensteen must be turning at a “slow idle” r.p.m. in their graves by now.

Over seven decades after the infamous “Battle of the Overpass” between Reuther’s fledgling United Auto Workers organizers and Ford Motor Company’s “Sociological Department” outside the hulking River Rouge colossus, Ford is poised to make the U.A.W. its top shareholder.

BusinessWeek even speculates that the U.A.W. could demand a seat on FoMoCo’s board.

Although the U.A.W. has repeatedly failed in its efforts to unionize the Japanese “invader” auto assembly plants and create a level playing field for the Detroit-based “Beg 3,” the emerging Ford-U.A.W. deal to fund up to 50% of FoMoCo’s Voluntary Employee Benefits Association (VEBA) liabilities with stock evidences absolute triumph by what’s left of the union.

Ford's stock is trading at all-time lows and closed on Feb. 23 at $1.73 per share. Its market value on Monday was just barely above $4 billion. (GM's was a distressing $1.1 billion.) By today's share price, Ford, if it availed itself of the maximum terms of the deal, would pay more to the UAW in stock than all of the company's shares are worth today.

Certainly, if and when shares of “F” recover some value, the U.A.W. VEBA is poised for a windfall. And if disaster strikes Motown, undoubtedly the U.A.W. will be first in line at the Obama bailout window.

Speedzzter predicts the U.A.W. will eventually attempt to off-load a substantial portion of the VEBA liabilities onto the Feds.

For Ford, not having to blow cash that ought to be used to sustain future operations on funding platinum benefit packages extorted when times were better is dodging a huge “Bullitt (tm).”

At least it promises to keep FoMoCo in the game a little longer.

And that’s at least a little good news in these tough times for Ford’s loyal “Total Performance” owners and fans.

Even better than Roush-Fenway's Matt Kenseth winning two in a row in his NASCAR "funnycar-of-tomorrow!"

Now if Ford would just get busy with those EcoBoost (tm) V8s . . . and a supercharger-ready V8 Mustang for blue collar "Stang Bangers" . . . .

Who knows if the U.A.W. would support either of these plans.

Moreover, will the new "employee-owners" of Ford be willing to make the tough calls necessary to compete in the global auto marketplace? Or is entrenched labor inefficiency the new "Job One" in Dearborn.

Time will tell. Time will tell.

Don't hit the rev limiter, Reuther . . . .

SPEEDZZTER’S NOTE: Freiburger’s Junkyard, minus the legendary David Freiburger (who returned to the executive helm at Hot Rod Magazine a few weeks ago), is now .“bangshiftcom” It will be interesting to see how long the site stays viable without the brand name. At least they didn’t call it “Speedzzter.com”