Details of Kentucky Ford worker’s death still not revealed
By
Jessica Goldstein and Jerry White
13 December 2017
It has been four days since the death of 41-year-old electrician Ivan Bridgewater III at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, and company, union and state officials have still not revealed the cause of Bridgewater’s death. Initial reports by Louisville police that the worker had been electrocuted have been denied by Ford.
Family and friends held a funeral service for Bridgewater in his hometown of Seymour, Indiana, across the Ohio River, 53 miles north of Louisville. A gathering to celebrate Bridgewater’s life, who leaves behind his wife of five years, Meagan, a two-year-old son, Ivan Bridgewater IV, and many other family members is being held today.
Bridgewater was hired into the truck assembly plant in September 2015. The massive six million-square-foot plant employs more than 8,000 workers who build Ford’s highly profitable F-250-F-550 Super Duty pickups and Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigators sports utility vehicles.
After working at Impact Forge, a component manufacturer and Ford supplier, Bridgewater was one of the 3,000 workers hired into KTP after 2014 to churn out new aluminum body vehicles, including the eight-passenger Navigator, which starts at $72,000.
His widow told a local news station that the young couple was excited that he had gotten an electrician’s job at Ford. “We were absolutely thrilled to have this,” she said. “He was such a pro-union man. And he was so proud and I was so proud of him. I said, ‘You’ve achieved everything you’ve ever wanted to achieve in your life now.’”
With the collusion of the United Auto Workers union, however, Ford and other automakers have combined crafts, shifted work…