Ford Motor (nyse: F - news - people) said today it will idle three auto-production plants because of its Firestonetire recall, taking 6, 000 workers off the production lines.
There's been no talk of a strike, and it wasn't clear whether the union would use the talks as a pattern to set the stage for negotiations during the summer with tire makers Bridgestone-Firestone and Michelin-BFGoodrich.
Suffering from a failed takeover of the U.S.' Firestone and Germany's Continental and a declining tire market, Pirelli offered him his first restructuring challenge at a multinational.