Ford Motor Co. appointed Mike Fitzsimmons to lead its global labor team effective Oct. 20, the company announced in a press release.
Fitzsimmons will serve as vice president of global labor, overseeing labor relations for Ford’s roughly 57,000 United Auto Workers members, the largest union workforce at any automaker.
He succeeds Kevin Legel, who is retiring from his position as VP of labor affairs after 32 years at Ford. Despite the slight title change from his predecessor, Fitzsimmons will also lead the company’s labor relations efforts.
Fitzsimmons joins Ford from Boeing, where he spent more than a decade in labor relations. He began as senior labor counsel in 2012, was promoted to chief labor counsel in 2015 and was named VP of labor relations and global HR policy in 2019, according to his LinkedIn profile. For the past six years in his most senior role, Fitzsimmons managed collective bargaining and contract administration for contracts covering more than 60,000 unionized Boeing employees worldwide. Before Boeing, Fitzsimmons held labor and HR positions at Microsoft, Dow Jones & Company and Sikorsky Aircraft.
Fitzsimmons will lead the Ford labor relations team as it prepares to negotiate the UAW’s next bargaining agreement, set to expire in 2028. The last contract expiration in 2023 triggered an unprecedented strike that targeted Ford and two other Detroit automakers, Stellantis and General Motors.
The strike caused Ford CEO Jim Farley to remark at a 2024 conference that the Ford and UAW “relationship has changed,” which represents a “watershed moment for the company.” Before the 2023 walkout, the company had avoided a U.S. strike since 1978.
The UAW, led by president Shawn Fain, has signaled that it will prioritize securing pensions and retirement health care in the 2028 negotiations, benefits that the union partially conceded when automakers faced bankruptcy during the Great Recession.
Fitzsimmons has been no stranger to strikes. At Boeing, roughly 3,200 workers in Missouri and Illinois have been on strike for two months after rejecting a contract offer in August. Last fall, 33,000 Boeing workers on the West Coast went on strike for nearly two months before ratifying a contract with the company.
“We are pleased to welcome Mike to our team and look forward to having his deep knowledge of labor relations at Ford,” Jen Waldo, Ford’s chief people and employee experience officer, said in a statement. Fitzsimmons will report to Waldo.
