FORD yesterday pulled back from a potential confrontation with its
manual unions over redundancies -- citing the improving UK car market as
the reason for reprieving 295 jobs.
By rescheduling output targets to boost production by 10 vehicles a
day at Dagenham in Essex and 80 a day at Halewood on Merseyside, the
number of required redundancies falls to 885, a figure the company hopes
to achieve without the need for compulsory redundancies.
At talks in London, Ford of Europe vice-chairman Albert Caspers also
withdrew a document concerning the possible contracting out of certain
operations and promised local consultation with the unions. When leaked
last week, the document sparked unofficial strike action across several
Ford plants.
Union negotiators and about 100 Ford workers who lobbied the meeting
were pleased at the outcome but, with management refusing to give
guarantees of no enforced redundancies, warned they would call a strike
ballot should Ford resort to compulsion later in the year.
They hoped that the company's view on the slightly improving UK car
market proved justified but felt that the threat of industrial action
especially at a time when the Mondeo, the Sierra replacement, was about
to be launched was the key factor in Ford's apparent change of heart.
After losing #787m on its UK operations, excluding Jaguar, Ford is
pinning its hopes on the Mondeo helping to restore its fortunes. The car
is assembled in Genk in Belgium with considerable British content,
including engines and transmissions.
A sceptical Mr Jimmy Airlie, chief Ford negotiator for the Amalgamated
Engineering and Electrical Union, spoke of the ''magical'' way the
market had apparently picked up since last Friday ''just enough to
obviate the need for compulsory redundancies''.
He saw it as a victory for common sense and the Ford workers'
determination not to accept compulsory redundancies and summed up the
situation with: ''We had them by the bollocks -- it was game, set, and
match to us.''
Yesterday's events will have little effect on threatened white-collar
cutbacks. Staff unions have a strike mandate in the event of enforced
staff redundancies, which look a possibility as the number of volunteers
still falls 262 short of the 2100 demanded. They are to meet the company
on March 23.
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