Cornerstone for job cuts
Austerity course at Ford: Union and Management agree
Ford shrinks in Germany, now the next job cuts is pending. The union ran against the plans storm, but there is an agreement. Both sides have to swallow bitter pills.
The dispute over strong job cuts at the car manufacturer Ford Germany has been defused. As Ford and IG Metall announced, the collective bargaining partners have agreed on severance payments, partial retirement and a financial protective shield for pensioners. Ford has around 11,500 employees in Cologne, and 2,900 fewer should be by the end of 2027.
The agreement was presented in front of several thousand employees at company meetings. She stipulates that the Ford pensioners would get money from the US mother group in the event of a so far only theoretically possible bankruptcy of the Ford Germany subsidiary-that would not be the case so far.
The IG Metall had warned of such a negative scenario, and its worries are likely to smooth out now. The dispute over the job cuts had grabbed for months and led to the first strike at Ford Cologne in May, and work in the works rested for a day.
Union gives up Faustfand
In the negotiations, the trade union met the management a bit. So far, the terminations of Ford in Cologne have been excluded by 2032, this guarantee brought the employee side into a relatively strong position in the negotiations. In the case of the theoretically possible bankruptcy, such a guarantee would be worth nothing, so this fist land of the union relativized itself in the negotiations.
According to the company, the new agreement stipulates that operating terminations are possible if all socially responsible measures should be exhausted. So if there is not enough workers who go voluntarily, the company could ultimately rely on operational terminations.
In order for the agreement to be valid, the consent of the IG Metall members at Ford is still missing-this should be obtained in a pre-vote. “We now have a real safety net that takes the employee the existential fears,” said the IG Metall spokesman at Ford Cologne, David Lüdtke, and evaluated the result of the negotiation positively.
“The job cuts primarily relies on voluntary departure,” said works council Benjamin Gruschka. “The severance payment is generous and much better than usual in the automotive industry.”
Company is under pressure
Ford Germany is in a difficult situation. The car manufacturer said goodbye to the production of combustion cars in Cologne, in 2023 the last small car Ford Fiesta ran off the assembly line.
With almost two billion euros, the location for the production of electric cars has been converted, but these investments have not yet paid off – two new electricity models are not yet a seller.
After all, your sale attracts step by step how numbers from the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) prove. Thanks to a long-known billion-dollar financial injection by the US mother, the debt mountain is largely reduced to the Germany subsidiary.
The managing director of Ford-Werke, Marcus Wassenberg, named the agreement with the union good news for Ford and its employees, because it was an important step to build a sustainably profitable business in Europe. “The agreement is an important basis for expanding Ford’s management position in the commercial vehicle segment and building a profitable, strongly differentiated and competitive car business.”
dpa
Source: Stern
