According to Ford, its latest UAW contract gets the fully loaded hourly cost to $55/hour. It is supposed to go to $50/hour in 2011. That is the cost including benefits - medical, pension, etc.
Ford's new deal with UAW gets wages down to $55/hour — Autoblog
Ford-UAW deal cuts wages to $55 an hour | Reuters
That is nearly the same as the fully loaded hourly cost for the Asian transplants (Toyota, etc), which is around $50/hour. As mentioned in my earlier post, Ford's pension assets and liabilities should also be more or less matched up now, and its obligation for retiree medical is capped.
So the UAW's hourly cost should no longer be an "big" competitive disadvantage for Ford, and neither should retiree pension and medical.
I don't know about work rules, etc, but unless we can find that Ford takes substantially more man-hours to make a car than the transplants, I doubt work rules are a "big" competitive disadvantage. As pointed out in one of the links, Ford workers' labor is only about 10% of the cost of making the car.
So if Ford is unable to compete with the Japanese, Koreans, Europeans etc from here on out, it will be hard to claim that it is primarily due to the UAW.
I haven't checked on GM and Chrysler's situation, but I think it is similar, as they should get a similar UAW contract.
There have been some big changes in the US auto industry in the past year or two.