Ford cuts 450 jobs

Ford Australia will shed 450 jobs and could operate for the remainder of 2008 on a two-to-three day production roster, according to statements today.

The job losses -- by way of voluntary redundancy -- were announced by new President and CEO, Marin Burela, at the company's headquarters this afternoon. They come on top of 350 redundancies announced in August and include both production and white-collar positions.

The jobs will be axed between now and late November.

Burela said the redundancies were necessary to "right size" Ford's local operation, in light of shrinking demand for large cars. He termed the changes a "rebalancing" of Ford's workforce.

Burela believes there will be sufficient uptake of voluntary redundancies to meet the company's 450 job 'target'. Around 200 of the redundancies will be in white-collar positions.

When questioned on whether further job cuts could be made if Falcon and Territory sales do not improve, Burela skirted the issue.

Following the Ford announcement, AMWU Victorian State Secretary, Steve Dargavel, claimed the company had scheduled production closures that in effect would reduce Ford's production operations back to two or three days a week until the New Year.

Dargavel also foreshadowed downstream job losses at suppliers such as Unidrive, Dana and PBR.

Ford spokesperson, Sinead Mcalary, disputes the union's claim.

Mcalary told the Carsales Network: "We informed the unions today of five market response days between the down balance [Ed: job losses], which takes place in November and the Christmas shutdown. We will confirm those down days five days in advance of each of them occuring... In other words, we may end up working those days if the market improves.

"We also flagged a potential risk of another five days (on top of those above) in that same period. These additional days are not in our production plans...[but] we thought it would be disingenuous of us not to flag the risk with them today when we were talking about the rest of the business."

The AMWU is also claiming that Ford will use the opportunity to contract out over 700 positions. Dargavel says this number is comprised of 600 positions in powertrain production, 80 in development and 60 in the press shop.

If the union's assertions are correct, the outsourced jobs -- most of which appear to be targeting the Geelong engine plant -- may solve one particular problem faced by Ford; how to keep production running steadily in the period leading up to the plant's closure.

Ford will bring also forward, and extend to four weeks, its Christmas factory closures. The Carsales Network understands that Ford will use the production hiatus to clear its wholesale and retail pipelines.

The current job cuts take total job losses at Ford to around 1500 over the last 18 months.

New boss Burela stated the latest proposed job cuts would not affect or delay the company's plans to commence local production of Focus in late 2011. He stated the "rebalance" had taken into account "vital assets" the company required for Focus and other production and development responsibilities, moving forward.

[Ed: after this story was published, Ford contacted the Carsales Network in relation to the AMWU's claim that powertrain (and other) jobs would contracted be out. Ford says the 600 powertrain positions referred to relate to the Geelong engine plant closure, which the company announced last year. Ford says the union was "mischievious" in commenting on those changes in this instance and suggested the move to realign the positions was "nothing new".]