Ford Almussafes is facing an important moment for its team, following the news released last Friday that is no less grim because of its numbers. multinational want to reduce YOU related to 1,144 people in the workforce at Almussafes. Or the same thing, eliminate one of the five existing jobs at the factory and bring headcount to a history low: around 4,650.
In the immediate background of the decision, as the company itself states, End of S-Max and Galaxy production At the end of March, the two models they said created a “huge workload” despite only representing 6% of the units produced at the factory last year. The longer-term story is that of an ERE, which is far from being in transition as might be expected at first, and is part of the path to electrification of the plant by 2026. With less manpower needed – 40% less than company estimates – to produce 100% electric vehicles instead of current internal combustion engine vehicles.
complex movements
However, beyond these future guarantees, it is indisputable that the facility has had some hard times recently. Erte, which will remain in effect until the end of June this year as its most up-to-date proof, stems from the supply and semiconductor crisis that started in 2020 and continued production with semi-gas in a period of vehicle sales. from low numbers
Add to this that this cumbersome ERE will be the third person the team has lived through after 2020 and 2021, resulting in nearly a thousand departures in total. In the latter, without going any further, an agreement was reached for these to happen through early retirements and layoffs – a line that majority union UGT-Ford currently finds difficult to fully realize in this case given the number – under more favorable conditions for workers. For example, people aged 54 and younger who benefited from incentive leave received compensation for 45 days a year, while they worked with a maximum of 42 months’ pay with seniority or special bonus added. Early retirement began at the age of 55.
A bumpy road
Regardless of the circumstances and whether it is ultimately affected by more than a thousand jobs or whether this effect is less, The reality is that this new ERE path to electrification will mean one of the darkest chapters for a factory that has experienced critical moments and other more critical moments in its nearly 50-year history. scenarios affecting employment in the factory since its establishment. In the late ’70s, when the success of the first Ford Fiesta that would become the emblem of the factory began, staffing was close to its historic maximum with more than 10,000 employees and nearly 250,000 vehicles produced each year.
After several years of decline in worker numbers, in the late ’80s and early ’90s the barrier of 300,000 vehicles produced was to be overcome for the first time, thanks to the use of the third generation Fiesta in production. lines are preserved with two more models: Escort and Orion. However, from that moment There will be a sustained loss of workers that will peak between 2008 and 2011.years when the factory would lose the Mazda 2 and two other historic models like the Ka and Focus, leaving the minimum number of workers so far: 5,601 workers.
Following this decline, the last major labor impulse would come in 2015, when the factory underwent a total transformation in its idiosyncrasies and continued to produce larger vehicles like the Kuga, Mondeo or Tourneo, among others, after conditions. such as the closure of the firm’s Belgian factory in Genk. After all, this was the last great moment of labor and output growth for a factory that is now facing a historic blow to the workforce less than a decade later.