Ford has axed a shift at its Southampton Transit plant in southern England, citing “significantly reduced medium commercial vehicle sales across Europe” amidst union fears this may be the start of the automaker’s exit from UK van production.
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Over half the plant’s output is exported, mostly across Europe.
Ford said in a statement it would “align shift patterns with the vehicle volumes that will be required from the Southampton plant”.
In February and March existing early and late shifts will be replaced by a single daytime shift. Production employees will work on this single shift on rotation basis and will receive full basic pay.
“Southampton plant is retaining its flexible shift pattern capability during this quarter so that it can respond to any future changes in demand,” the automaker said.
Ford said it had used non-production days at the plant since October as a way to regulate Transit supply in line with demand. In November non production days during the first quarter were proposed with employee representatives. For the current period to 3 April, 20 non-production days have been confirmed.
Though the Transit remains the UK’s best selling van its Europe-wide sales fell 10% year on year compared with 2007.
“Ford is taking all necessary measures to protect all its plants from creating excess stock and incurring the associated costs,” the automaker added.
Southampton’s local paper, the Southern Daily Echo, said unions and Ford workers fear the company will make the ‘temporary’ cuts permanent. Other Transit models are made at a plant in Turkey which is understood also to have switched to single-shift working but laid off 1,000 workers, the Echo said.
The paper said the “lockdown” of the Ford UK factory would run from 6 to 23 February.
Unite union regional officer Ian Woodland was quoted as saying: “I am quite shocked and to myself and many workers it has confirmed all the rumours that have been flying.
“It is a very worrying development and I don’t feel very confident that the company will go back to their usual shift arrangement in April and I don’t see that they will continue having people sat around on down days indefinitely.
“Workers are very concerned and to many this looks like the start of Ford pulling out of Southampton.”
Unite did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
