Ford's Louisville Assembly Plant will make its last Explorer one year from now when the plant shuts down for a renovation that will allow it to reopen in 2011, employing thousands making more fuel-efficient vehicles, plant manager Ken Minielly said.
"We are going to gut this plant to the four walls. The complete tear-out and reinstallation will take about six months," he told The Courier-Journal. "This place will be ready to build prototypes by the late spring of 2011."
The final Explorer production date of Nov. 24, 2010, "could drift a little bit," he said. But his timeline for starting the conversion is the most detailed by a Ford executive since the automaker promised to save the plant from closure in the UAW's 2007 labor agreement.
And despite the UAW's overwhelming rejection last month of cost-saving contract changes, Minielly said he was "confident" that Ford will proceed with the renovation that he estimated could cost up to $600 million.
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"Everything is still on track," he said. "This plant is going to explode in growth."
In interviews this month with the Louisville newspaper, Minielly and UAW Local 862 officials sketched a picture of the next two years as Ford transforms the factory.
When complete, Louisville Assembly will be capable of assembling multiple types of fuel-efficient vehicles. The factory will be one of two U.S. plants capable of such flexible small-vehicle assembly.
"The future of Ford in Louisville is not only bright but it is clearer than it has ever been," Metro Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson said of Minielly's comments, which were made at an unrelated gathering of Ford Edsel owners. "The investments Ford will make will create hundreds of additional jobs."
Once production shuts down this time next year, Minielly said, Ford will retain roughly 220 UAW skilled trades workers full time "to help with the tear-out and reinstallation of the new tooling." The remaining 900 workers at the plant will be laid off.
By the third quarter of 2011, those workers will be eligible for call back and others will be added, said Steve Stone, UAW Local 862 Building Chairman.
"We will have at least twice the work force we have right now," he said. "We will launch on at least two shifts."
The first production versions of the new vehicles are to roll off new lines in the fourth quarter of 2011, Minielly said.
Now, Louisville Assembly employs 1,100 workers on just one shift to make the Explorer, Mercury Mountaineer and the Sport Trac pickup. Last summer, Ford laid off 264 people from the plant as Explorer sales continued their long decline.
After years of enduring uncertainty about whether the plant would be renovated, Louisville Assembly trim line worker Karen Bybee, 46, was glad to hear the news.
"I am elated that it is officially on record. I am elated that he is the one that said it," Bybee said from her home near Iroquois Park. "Now I go from being stuck between a rock and a hard place to being able to look ahead."
Allen Stinson, a skilled trades tool maker with 32 years at Ford who works at Louisville Assembly, greeted the news warily.
"I hope it all comes to pass just the way they say. I would like to see the people back in there working," said Stinson, 58, of Mount Washington. "At Ford, I know things change hour to hour. Nothing is concrete."
Minielly predicted that Ford's quality will not suffer when the company hires new assembly line workers for $14 per hour, or half the current union pay scale. According to the current contract, lower paid new hires can earn more once they make up 20 percent of Ford's work force nationwide.
"In this devastating economy, if we have openings for 2,000 people; we'll probably have 200,000 applicants," Minielly said. "We will be able to pick the very best and the brightest."
In 2008, the state approved tax incentives for Ford that would allow the automaker to recover up to 30 percent or $180 million of new investment in Louisville by 2016 in the form of rebates on state income taxes.
"It is clear that our hard work is paying off," Gov. Steve Beshear said.
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Information from: The Courier-Journal, http://www.courier-journal.com