The job-cutting in North America is part of a massive retrenchment of
Ford’s global auto operations. The number two US automaker also plans to
cut 1,470 jobs at its Volvo division, primarily at plants in Sweden and
Belgium, and could sell the historic Browns Lane Jaguar plant near
Coventry in central England.

Ford’s cuts are part of a worldwide attack on jobs in the auto industry,
which is plagued by over-capacity. Volkswagen is said to be planning the
elimination of 14,000 jobs, including 10,000 in Germany. On Thursday,
10,000 workers marched in Barcelona, Spain to oppose plans by Volkswagen
subsidiary SEAT to cut nearly 1,500 jobs.

Ford’s plan, called the “Way Forward,” is not due to be released
officially until January and may still be revised. The leak to the press
was likely aimed at gauging the response of Wall Street investors, who
have been punishing the company’s stock—which is down to around $8 a
share—and demanding a major restructuring of Ford.

The company’s worldwide operations have lost $1.69 billion in the first
nine months of this year. Like GM, Ford has been hard hit by rising fuel
and other commodity prices, declining sales of large SUVs, and loss of
market share in the US to Japanese and European competitors.

The company plans to close plants in St. Louis, Atlanta and St. Paul,
Minnesota in the US, as well as an engine parts plant in Windsor, Ontario
and a truck-assembly plant in Cuautitlan, Mexico, according to unnamed
sources familiar with the automaker’s plans.

In addition to producing low-selling SUV and pick-up truck models, many of
the targeted plants have been undermined by years of layoffs and
investment cutbacks. In many cases, workers at these plants had various
concessionary and speed-up agreements imposed on them by Ford and the
United Auto Workers union (UAW), based on promises that new product lines
and investment would be lured away from other UAW-organized plants.

About 1,400 workers are employed at the suburban St. Louis plant in
Hazelwood, Missouri; 2,000 at the Twin Cities assembly plant in St. Paul;
and 2,100 at Ford’s Hapeville, Georgia plant. The closing of the latter
plant would be further blow to the Atlanta area, following GM’s decision
last month to shut the nearby Doraville assembly plant, which employs
3,000 workers. The Essex engine plant near Windsor, Ontario, employs 500
workers and the pick-up truck plant in the Mexico City suburb of
Cuautitlan employs nearly 1,000 workers.

For the time being, workers at the under-used Wixom, Michigan assembly
plant have apparently been spared, as Ford decided to shut its Atlanta
plant instead.

Ford currently employs about 49,000 workers in 19 assembly, 8 stamping, 10
power train and 5 casting plants in North America. Combined with the
white-collar jobs axed in November—and another 4,000 salaried job cuts
already announced—Ford’s labor force cutbacks are now at 15,500 and
counting. The current restructuring plan comes less than four years after
Ford launched an earlier cost-cutting effort to eliminate 20,000 North
American jobs and shut several plants.

The plant closings are expected to be just one part of a major shake-up of
Ford, which announced it was reducing production after its US sales fell
by 15 percent in November, the worst of any automaker. The company saw a
52 percent decline in sales of its highly profitable Ford Explorer SUV,
despite an extensive redesign of the vehicle. Ford once sold as many as
400,000 Explorers a year, according to the Wall Street Journal, and ran
two Explorer plants on overtime. This year, it will do well to sell more
than 240,000—a single plant’s worth.

In a voicemail sent to employees earlier this week, Ford CEO William Clay
Ford Jr. demanded even greater output under the threat of deeper attacks.

“Anyone who thinks or attempts to convince you that it’s business as usual
at Ford is wrong and would best serve us all by pursuing their interests
elsewhere. Our heritage of innovation must be reclaimed and renewed or the
greatness of our company will become part of our past. It’s that simple.”

The United Auto Workers did not respond to the Wall Street Journal story.
Since the mid-1970s, the UAW has collaborated with the Big Three
automakers in the destruction of hundreds of thousands of auto jobs to
boost profits and help US automakers better compete with their
international rivals. After agreeing to an unprecedented cut in health
care benefits for GM workers, the UAW is currently negotiating similar
agreements with Ford and Chrysler.

With the job cuts by Ford, GM and the earlier announcement that bankrupt
auto parts maker Delphi would eliminate 24,000 positions, the US auto
industry is on track to meet, or possibly surpass, the 2001 record of
133,686 job cuts in one year, said Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., an
employment consulting firm.

The massive destruction of workers’ jobs and living standards—which
numbers alone do little to convey—belies the glowing reports from the Bush
administration and the media that the US economy is rolling ahead. On
Friday, the US Labor Department reported that unemployment held steady at
5 percent in November and that the economy had recovered from the
dislocations of Hurricane Katrina. “Our economy continues to gain strength
and momentum,” President Bush claimed at a White House appearance.

While there has been an up-tick in hiring in certain areas of the
economy—retail, post-hurricane construction and manufacturing—overall
working hours, as well as income, continues to fall or stagnate. In the
Midwestern industrial states of Michigan and Illinois, for example, since
1999 median family income has fallen by 19 percent ($9,914) and 12 percent
($6,000) respectively.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the current economic
“recovery” that began in November 2001 has been the worst, from the
standpoint of jobs, on record. “Over these years, the nation’s payrolls
have increased by 2.6%, well below the rate of the other recoveries that
have lasted this long, including the 1990s recovery, which also began as
‘jobless.’”

Jerry Isaacs