A union chief at Ford Motor’s Kentucky Truck Plant is warning fellow workers that a high rate of coronavirus-related absences and the automaker’s scramble to fill shifts could cost them jobs and even an entire crew.
The alert comes when the Detroit-based automaker is seeing Super Duty truck orders bounce back to pre-pandemic levels, but the pickup’s main manufacturing facility in Louisville has had 1,000 workers apply for leave under the federal COVID-19 law. That’s roughly one-eighth of the unionized workforce at the Chamberlain Lane facility in eastern Jefferson County.