{"id":7589,"date":"2016-02-05T10:21:34","date_gmt":"2016-02-05T10:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=7589"},"modified":"2016-02-05T16:10:55","modified_gmt":"2016-02-05T16:10:55","slug":"think-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=7589","title":{"rendered":"Think again"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Ford has been told by Unite it must reconsider a cost-cutting programme which will slash around 200 hundred skilled staff jobs at its UK operations.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The car giant \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which recently revealed its European business had returned to profit \u00e2\u20ac\u201c has announced measures aimed at saving nearly \u00c2\u0141140m a year.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A voluntary redundancy scheme has been launched, with company bosses quoted as saying the headcount would be reduced by \u00e2\u20ac\u015bmultiple hundreds\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 in administration and marketing.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unite reps fear that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s likely to signal a 10 per cent reduction of existing UK staff in those departments.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Effective organisation<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Les McDonald, national staff chairman of Unite at Ford, said, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe are continually proven to be Ford\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most cost effective, highly efficient organisation in Europe, if not the world delivering efficiencies year on year to assist in reducing costs in our European business.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe trade unions have a proven track record at working with the company to achieve efficiencies but this plan is very different.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis plan seeks to take out whole departments of skilled administration jobs which will never return to the UK again. This is not seeking to make savings through efficiencies but purely to offshore highly-skilled and productive jobs to low-cost countries using cheaper labour rates.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis in a market where we sell more Ford cars in Britain than the rest of Europe,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he added.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Crucial jobs <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThese are highly skilled manufacturing admin support jobs; they are about the finance, logistics and support for European plants. They are crucial to the operation,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 said McDonald.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Ford employs several thousand workers in the UK. Plants in Dagenham\u00c2\u00a0and Bridgend make car parts;\u00c2\u00a0there are also sites in Dunton in\u00c2\u00a0Essex, Daventry in Northamptonshire, and a head office at\u00c2\u00a0Warley in Essex.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Roger Madison, Unite National Officer for automotives, said he was disappointed by the news.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Ford have decided to announce this restructuring during, rather than at the end, of consultation.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Think again<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We understand the need to save money and become more efficient but if Ford think they are going to do this by off-shoring our work to low cost economies they can think again.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Treacherous act<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe will not stand idle and watch highly skilled jobs disappear without a fight. Ford have acted shamefully by going to press now, this act of treachery will forever tar relations between us,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he added.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Globally Ford made close to \u00c2\u01417.5 billion in profits last year.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ford has been told by Unite it must reconsider a cost-cutting programme which will slash around 200 hundred skilled staff jobs at its UK operations. &nbsp; The car giant \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which recently revealed its European business had returned to profit \u00e2\u20ac\u201c has announced measures aimed at saving nearly \u00c2\u0141140m a year. &nbsp; A voluntary redundancy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7593,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[386,122],"wps_subtitle":"Ford warned over jobs","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7589"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7589"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7619,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7589\/revisions\/7619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}