The German union IG Metall and Ford have agreed to slash the number of jobs at the Saarlouis factory by about 3,500 after production of the Focus ends there next year, the union told Reuters.

In June 2022, Ford decided to assemble a new electric vehicle in Spain, not Saarlouis, which has 4,500 workers, the report noted.

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The union told Reuters around 1,000 jobs at the plant would be retained after 2025, adding there would be no forced redundancies until 2032 and that workers could leave early with an attractive and well funded severance deal.

“We could not achieve the best solution so we decided to make do with the second best option: to make job cuts as expensive as possible for Ford,” Joerg Koehlinger, district manager of IG Metall Mitte, told the news agency.

Reuters noted talks between Ford and a potential investor in the plant fell through last October.

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