Ford Motor Co. celebrated the launch of its all-new global Focus on Thursday at the renovated Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, but hundreds of employees weren't ready to celebrate Gov. Rick Snyder.

On hand to note the success of one of the region's largest employers, Snyder took the stage to a smattering of boos from union workers, many of whom wore red T-shirts declaring their "Solidarity with Wisconsin."

"Come on guys," UAW Local 900 President Anderson Robinson

as the event even started. "We've already proven our point."

Snyder has taken heat from organized labor in recent weeks over plans to tax pensions and his support for a new law allowing state-appointed emergency financial managers to void public union contracts deemed unaffordable for struggling municipalities or school districts.

"I don't want him to touch my pension or my father's pension or anybody else's pension," one worker

. "That's money that we work hard for."

Snyder went on to praise Ford for helping reinvent the domestic auto industry, which he said had been operating on "a broken model."

The Michigan Assembly Plant is a key component of that reinvention. The factory previously produced gas-guzzling SUVs, but

, including the all-new Focus. The $550 million renovation allows the automaker to produce multiple market versions of the compact car on a single line, and the plant is home to one of the state's largest solar-panel systems.

"MAP epitomizes the best of what Ford stands for – fuel efficiency, quality, smart technology," said Mark Fields, president of The Americas. "Focus delivers even more of what customers truly want and value – and this new car could not arrive in the market at a better time."

Snyder, however, probably could have picked a better time to visit.