When your best players are your hardest workers, you’re going to have a good team. Just look at the Detroit Lions.
I wish that the Ford family, who owns the Lions, learned from their example. Ford is Michigan’s most important company. Ford put the world on wheels. Ford’s $5-a-day wage helped create the middle class. Ford made Detroit the Motor City.
Henry Ford’s American Plan created Detroit as we’ve always known it. The city that worked with its hands and was paid handsomely for it. Real men being paid real wages for real work. It’s almost quaint.
If we’re going to Make Detroit Great Again, our most important company, Ford, has to be a good Michigan citizen again. Lately, it hasn’t been.
Ford’s partner in building EV batteries, a Chinese company named CATL, was just designated a Chinese military company by the Department of Defense.
When Henry Ford wanted to build EVs, he called Thomas Edison. When Bill Ford wants to build EV batteries, he calls the Chinese military. Partnering with the Chinese seemed like the easier thing to do when Blue Oval Battery Park was announced. How easy is it now, Bill?
Three years ago, Ford took in $100 million in corporate welfare to hire 3,000 employees to build EVs. Two months later, it laid off 3,000 white-collar workers.
Nobody in their right mind would ever trade 3,000 white-collar jobs for 3,000 factory jobs, let alone pay a company $100 million to do this. But that’s exactly what happened under Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s watch. If Michigan’s politicians can’t guard the treasury, you’d think Ford would choose to be a steward of the public trust. Instead it pulled the okeydoke, then took the money and ran. It’s bad business, it’s bad character, and it’s bad stewardship. It’s bush league for a company that matters so much to Michigan.
Just last year, rather than employ 600 kids from Michigan, Ford was the top user of H-1B talent in the state.
When it comes to Michigan’s brain drain, Ford should be a solution. It’s one of the most iconic companies on the planet, especially to people raised here. People dream to work at Ford. Instead, Ford has embraced cheap foreign labor.
Dad and Grandpa used to be able to support families working at a Ford factory. Then their jobs were outsourced. Of the Big Three, Ford is better than GM and Chrysler about employing American workers. But a globalization that prizes cheap labor has hit Michigan, and its man-sized wages, the hardest.
Thirty years after NAFTA cost Dad his factory job, his son can’t even get an IT job at Ford because foreigners can be imported at 60% of the price. Replacement is as replacement does. In the 1910s, Henry Ford relied heavily on immigrant workers. In the 1920s, he pivoted to Americans, including people like my grandfather.
Ford’s American Plan was marked by high wages, a preference for American workers, and investment in suburbs, like my hometown, Inkster. No Henry Ford, no James Dickson. It was a good plan. Better than what we have now.
In Michigan, Ford’s blue oval should not just be a sign of quality. It should be a symbol of stewardship and citizenship. It’s time for the company Henry Ford built to be a good neighbor again.
James David Dickson is host of the Enjoyer Podcast. Join him in conversation on X @downi75.
