Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Ford Motor Co. hourly employees at four more factories rejected union contract concessions, dimming the automaker’s prospects for winning the givebacks granted to U.S. competitors.

Workers at the pickup plant in Dearborn, Michigan, voted 93 percent against concessions, Gary Walkowicz, an official with the United Auto Workers union Local 600, said in an e-mail.

The results mean that workers at 12 plants representing 18,600 UAW members have turned down the deal, compared with approvals at 4 facilities with 6,100 employees. Ford has 41,000 workers represented by the union, whose leaders negotiated the accord.

“This never happens. It’s a vote of no confidence in the bargaining committee and a vote of no confidence in Ford,” said Gary Chaison, a labor professor at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. “To reject a collective agreement at a time of economic difficulty is really a sign of desperation and anger.”

Ford, the only major U.S. automaker to avoid bankruptcy, is seeking concessions similar to those secured this year by General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC. The contract changes include a six-year ban on strikes over wages and benefits and freezing wages of new hires until 2015.

Separately, the Canadian Auto Workers union said today it reached a tentative three-year accord with Ford that includes a commitment for plants in that country to make up 10 percent of North American manufacturing output.

Canada Accord

“Ford threatened that if we didn’t come to an agreement, the company would begin shifting investment out of Canada,” CAW President Ken Lewenza said in a statement. “In today’s globalized economy where companies attempt to bypass community commitments, it’s crucial that we don’t allow this to happen.”

A phone call to Lauren More, a spokeswoman for Ford of Canada, wasn’t immediately returned.

Most UAW locals aren’t releasing vote tallies, so the running total for and against the U.S. givebacks isn’t known. Mark Truby, a spokesman for Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford, declined to comment on the balloting, which began Oct. 22.

Members of Local 600 in Dearborn, Ford’s largest UAW group, will finish voting tomorrow, a day before the Nov. 1 deadline. The results must be forwarded to union leaders by 12:01 a.m. on Nov. 3.

Ford fell 30 cents, or 4.1 percent, to $7 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have declined 2.9 percent since the end of September after more than tripling this year.

UAW Rejections

The latest rejections occurred at a Taurus factory in Chicago with about 1,278 hourly workers; a metal-stampings plant in Chicago with about 690 union employees; and a parts factory in Saline, Michigan, with about 1,500 UAW members.

Stamping-plant employees voted 80 percent against the deal, said Local 600’s Walkowicz who also disclosed the results at the Taurus factory without giving details. The Saline parts-plant workers nixed the concessions with 75 percent of the vote, Local 892 President Mark Caruso said in an e-mail.

Ford has said it needs the concessions to ensure that it doesn’t have a labor-cost disadvantage against GM and Chrysler, which also unloaded debt and closed plants as part of their restructuring in court.

Ford’s Options

Chaison said Ford may consider dropping the no-strike clause as a sweetener or adding some other inducement to get a positive result in a new round of balloting.

The automaker’s other option is to punish the UAW by making promised products in Canada or Mexico instead of the U.S., said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“Where we will see the result of this failure is in a product announcement -- moving some business out that had been planned here,” he said.

The Canadian union said the agreement with Ford contains a pledge to build a new model in its Oakville, Ontario, assembly plant and a new engine at a factory in Windsor, Ontario. The CAW represents about 7,000 Ford workers in Canada.

To contact the reporters on this story: Keith Naughton in Southfield, Michigan at Knaughton3@bloomberg.net; Mike Ramsey in Southfield, Michigan, at mramsey6@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 30, 2009 20:03 EDT