Workers must fight for the future of Ford (From Daily Echo)
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Transit staff must fight for Ford in Southampton, says boss Steve Adams
12:22pm Wednesday 9th December 2009 in News
Exclusive By Simon Carr, Eastleigh Chief Reporter
Ford Staff in Southampton
A CLOUD of uncertainty looms over the giant Southampton Ford plant, the Daily Echo can reveal.
Top-level bosses say the tough economic times make it impossible to guarantee the long term future of the plant and the safety of the remaining jobs.
Even the motor giant’s plan to build chassis cabs at the Ford plant may be in jeopardy, it has emerged.
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Echo, Ford in Britain’s new commercial vehicle line director Steve Adams said he and the entire Southampton team would have to fight to safeguard the future of the factory and its 500-strong workforce.
He went on to say that,while the company’s board had given the green light to the current model chassis cab being built in Southampton, approval for vehicles in the new model range had yet to granted.
Mr Adams said: “The position we are taking right now is that we are focusing our attention around the chassis cab versions.
“That is what we have told the workers and that is our planning assumption as it stands right now.
“What we will be doing in the future will be tied in with the planning approval process.
“Also, as we see the future unfolding, we will confirm what we are planning to do as far as Southampton is concerned.
“Probably in about 12 months’ time we will have a much better idea of Southampton’s long-term future.”
Mr Adams added the best way to ensure the plant’s future place and stave off threats from competitors was to continue to make vans of an exceptional quality and see to it that employees at all levels of the company are “pulling in the same direction”.
The new question marks will send shockwaves across the shop floor for workers, who saw more than 500 colleagues take redundancy earlier this year.
Staff have also experienced long periods of production downtime and seen the once thriving hub of manufacturing reduced to a single shift.
News that output was to be slashed, jobs cut and production of the iconic Transit van exported to Turkey came to light last year when the Daily Echo exclusively published a leaked memo.
Below you can watch clips of the exclusive interview with Steve Adams.
• Outlining Transit production
• Steve Adams on the future of Ford in Southampton
Comments(17)
southy
says...
1:12pm Wed 9 Dec 09
People really do need to start thinking. Do they want to see there jobs go aboard. Do they want higher unemployment, higher crime rate, more poverty, more homeless and not be able to make ends meet, if this is your choice then any of the right wings partys are for you. Like we been having for the last 30 years.
But if you dont, and you want keep the jobs in the UK, or lower unemployment ect ect ect ect, Then left wing politics are for you, And you will only find that in the Socialist grounps, The ones that have broken away from the Labour party. For Labour is no longer a Socialist party, Its become another right wing capitalist party. You measure a political party by what it do, And not by what they say. IE:- Part of the labour manifest at the last general election was a vote on the EU. What happen to this, we never got the vote on the EU. The socialist party and the cnwp will give the people the right of the vote on the EU and it be one off the first things they will do, if they take control of government.
Militant Ford Worker
says...
2:04pm Wed 9 Dec 09
southy
says...
2:37pm Wed 9 Dec 09
Militant Ford Worker wrote:adams has just relised his job on the line to.
As predicted.
St.DaveH
says...
3:24pm Wed 9 Dec 09
Carpe Diem
says...
4:00pm Wed 9 Dec 09
Raymond Groutage
says...
4:38pm Wed 9 Dec 09
is it not ridiculus to see Hampshire people out of work whilst their council tax is paying for foreign vehicles to be used as ambulances,police cars,council vehicles.Why do the police have to have BMW`s.Cars made in England can do the job just as well.I can hardly see the Germans using Jaguars,they are now just as good as anything on the road.It is time our councilars stood up for England and English workers.Those Scots who have "governed" us for the last 13 years certainly will not.
damien thorn
says...
5:20pm Wed 9 Dec 09
n is corporate facism,pure and simple,the global warming tax scam will pay for the coming world government ,and slavery if you are lucky.
rjfmusic
says...
8:00pm Wed 9 Dec 09
southy
says...
8:46pm Wed 9 Dec 09
but your right in away in saying that governments dont control, but your also wrong at the same time. big companys could not get away with it, if they did not get the backing from government. and a way to put the brakes on it all. is to take over the factory/s and make them a nationalise industry or a co-op it the moment they move operations to another country. it be very easy to do, because the land, building and the gear in side the factory in owned by the british state. and the model/designs are lease to companys under licence, you do this to a few companys like fords they soon will have second thoughts about moving out, they would not want the extra competion on the market.
wennie
says...
9:00pm Wed 9 Dec 09
Condor Man
says...
10:42pm Wed 9 Dec 09
Militant Ford Worker
says...
11:21pm Wed 9 Dec 09
Carpe Diem wrote:Spot on.
This is a symptom of the global free market economy. Ford will use the most cost effective resources it has to produced the next range of Transit vehicles. Steve Adams said that Ford is considering the options and awaiting approval. If I was a Ford worker I'd be looking for another job now. Ford is an American company whose only obligation is to it's owners and shareholders - they do not care about Southampton. They only care about profit. This is big business running the worlds economy - governments can do nothing about this. You only need to look at the situation when Magner reneged on the deal to bail out Opel plants in Germany - leaving the German government in the lurch. If you think that governments are behind the EU think again. It's big business that started the ball rolling to remove barriers to trade and migration so that they could drive down costs and have a bigger pool of resources. And before Southy starts espousing the socialist model let me just say that it doesn't work either - it's just a way of making everybody equally poor and miserable. If you want British jobs to be guaranteed you have to buy British goods made by British companies. You also need to stop the British governent allowing our railways, airports, utility companies, banks and building societies from being sold to foreign owners.
on the line
says...
1:11am Thu 10 Dec 09
Happy christmas
Carpe Diem
says...
9:24am Thu 10 Dec 09
southy wrote:Rose-tinted specs there Southy. If you kicked Ford out they would go and manufacture somewhere else in Europe (or Turkey) - as they are more than likely to do this time round due to cost considerations. Also, you cannot make people buy the British goods you produce, unless you would also stop imports or tax them so highly that they become unaffordable. That's called protectionism and is not allowed by the EU. As I said the socialist model does not work, it just makes everybody equally poor and equally miserable - except for those running the country. The key is for us as consumers to change our habits, rather than looking for the cheapest products, that invariably are sourced from Asia to the detriment of local industry, we should be trying to buy British wherever we can.
carpe take a relook at what your saying, some off it is socialism. but your right in away in saying that governments dont control, but your also wrong at the same time. big companys could not get away with it, if they did not get the backing from government. and a way to put the brakes on it all. is to take over the factory/s and make them a nationalise industry or a co-op it the moment they move operations to another country. it be very easy to do, because the land, building and the gear in side the factory in owned by the british state. and the model/designs are lease to companys under licence, you do this to a few companys like fords they soon will have second thoughts about moving out, they would not want the extra competion on the market.
southy
says...
10:44am Thu 10 Dec 09
the transit van is the biggest selling mid range van in the uk. so turning it into a co-op or nationalise it would go in a long way helping in keeping the money here. let them build transits in turkey we would not need to worry about taxing the imports extra. becuase even lo they can make them cheaper in turkey, the shipping cost would make them more expensive than the same model made here but under a new brand name.
and because turkey is not in the eu, we are allowed to put an anti-flood tax on transits from turkey. so there no problem there.
Peter Stewart
says...
12:16pm Sat 12 Dec 09
Whether you buy CHEAP foreign goods or use cheap foreign labour, you are destroying British jobs.
Before the Tories let the EU annex Britain in 1972, we hated CHEAP FOREIGN “crap”. We understood its threat. We did not own as much, but it was made British made and not bought on a credit card.
We imposed tariffs on cheap foreign goods. We made a REAL “level playing field”, unlike the phoney one imposed by the EU Single European Act (ratified by globalist Tories as a way for our EU rivals to get their hands on our biggest businesses).
After 1972 we were conditioned into accepting a globalist TARIFF-FREE culture, including cheap foreign goods and sacrificing our own manufacturing jobs if they could be done cheaper elsewhere (and they ALWAYS will be until we too are a 3rd world country)!
EU Globalism has NOT brought us increased wealth. Only the globalist exploiters have got richer. They increased their wealth at our expense. They gave us personal debt. Above all they exchanged our manufacturing base for nothing more than cheap foreign goods. For every British manufacturing job WE have surrendered, we have destroyed 5 more service jobs that go with it. All this under the euphemism “European Union”.
The Tories said we could survive as a “service” nation. What rot! Now with open EU borders and the mass immigration of cheap EU labour, our service jobs are going too.
Consider Turkey! Under the EU-Turkey Customs Union Turkish goods can be imported into Britain TARRIF FREE! By using cheap foreign labour and by destroying British jobs in the process of fattening its profits, FORD is guilty of PROFITEERING (making unfair or immoral profits).
The bottom line: EVERY one of you who does nothing, must take the blame for what happens in a few years time when the EU has destroyed our ENTIRE manufacturing base.
The answer is simple: Leave the EU and put the jobs back into Britain. Meanwhile BUY BRITISH!
blackcat04 says...
12:51pm Wed 9 Dec 09