Key terms of Ford's contract with the UAW

Here are some of the terms of Ford's contract with the UAW and how they compare with the details of the UAW's agreements with General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.

• Retiree health care: Ford will be required to put up substantially less cash than GM or Chrysler to fund a voluntary employees' beneficiary association, or VEBA, that will take over responsibility for hourly retiree health care. Only 40 percent of Ford's contribution will be in the form of cash, compared with GM's 54 percent and Chrysler's 59 percent.

• Factory investment: Ford will invest cash that would have gone into the VEBA in its plants to make them flexible, enabling them to produce more than one kind of model. Ford intends to make all of its North American plants flexible, except for those it expects to close as part of a previously announced restructuring plan.

• Job security: Ford agreed to remove two plants -- Wayne Stamping and Assembly Plant and the Ohio Assembly Plant in Avon Lake -- from its list of facilities targeted for closure and will not close any other U.S. assembly plants beyond those already slated to be shuttered. Ford also made specific new product commitments to Wayne and other facilities. GM set a moratorium on outsourcing, agreed to retain current product plans at 16 UAW assembly plants and made investment and future allocation commitments for 12 of those plants. Chrysler made no future product commitments but identified $15 billion in potential investment in U.S. plants during the term of the contract. The company announced $3 billion in powertrain investments in June.

• Two-tier wages: Ford may hire new workers in assembly and other types of jobs at lower wages until the overall number of workers in the lower-wage tier reaches 20 percent of its UAW work force. GM and Chrysler may hire workers at lower wages but only for certain jobs not core to making vehicles.

• Jobs bank: Ford workers may not stay in the jobs bank, earnings nearly full wages, beyond one year. In that time, if they are offered another job at Ford, they must take it or leave the company. GM workers may turn down one offer but must take the second one. Chrysler workers without jobs may spend up to two years in the jobs bank. After that, the UAW and Chrysler would negotiate a plan for workers.