UAW-Ford provides assembly line of food for holidays

DETROIT — One person's overtime funds another's turkey dinner under the UAW-Ford Boxes of Love Food Giveaway that will help feed 25,000 families over the holidays.

About $750,000 is being spent to help feed needy families in communities where Ford has facilities. The bulk of the food boxes — 17,000 — are being distributed in the Detroit area.

The UAW-Ford Brownstown Packaging Depot in Romulus was transformed into an assembly plant last weekend as three shifts of volunteers assembled the fixings of a fine holiday meal. Each basket has a 12 to 14 pound turkey, boxes of stuffing, macaroni and cheese, cranberry sauce and corn bread mix, canned vegetables, cake mix and frosting.

More than 200 helpers pitched in to assemble and distribute the boxes.

The last of the boxes will be distributed Saturday at the Highland Park Fire Department, Fellowship Chapel, Butzel Family Center and a number of churches and community and senior centers.

This is the second Boxes of Love Food Giveaway, funded by the UAW-Ford National Programs Center Joint Training Fund that supports community and philanthropic efforts year-round in addition to providing worker training.

A formula, based on the number of employees, hours worked and overtime determines how much money Ford puts into the fund each month, and a board determines how it is spent. Union dues do not fund these initiatives.

UAW-Ford does a lot of community work and sponsorships but had never done anything of this scale until last year, said Jimmy Settles, UAW vice president and director of the National Ford Department.

"It was a last-minute thing," Settles said of the first food giveaway.

Bill Dirksen, Ford's vice president of labor relations, co-chairs the effort with Settles.

"It was a real eye-opener" last year, Dirksen said. "It was a steady flow of people, many on foot. They were very appreciative."

People were helping one another push wheelchairs or carry boxes of food, Settles said.

After handing out 20,000 boxes of food last year, the decision was made to do it again this year and increase it to 25,000 boxes.

"A lot of people are not eating properly," Settles said.

Ford employees wanted to help the many people who are homeless and seniors with no opportunity to increase their earnings.

Additionally, "so many of our youth are unemployed," Settles said, and many lack the education and skills to get jobs in the growth sectors.

Many cannot pass Ford's standardized written tests as well as dexterity tests and background checks that are all part of screening for job candidates, Dirksen said.

A group of ministers came to Ford seeking help for the ill-equipped job seekers. UAW-Ford arranged for volunteer teachers, and in October, 300 people who were unemployed or had a low-paying jobs attended classes, and 167 subsequently passed Ford's testing. Some have since been hired into plants, Dirksen said.

Packing the food boxes last weekend also became a learning experience for teens, many from inner-city schools, who got a taste of what factory work is like.

"They were saying, 'Wow, this is what my dad did,' " Settles said. It became an opportunity to stress the importance of education to get better jobs.