Ford Spain has announced a new ERE (Employment Regularization File) at its Almussafes plant in Valencia to cut 1,622 jobs, a third of the workforce.
In five years, Ford has collaborated with the social democratic General Union of Workers (UGT) to carry out four employment regulation files in Almussafes. He has eliminated more than 6,000 jobs, from 8,300 to about 3,200, if the latest cuts are implemented.
These are the consequences of the bidding war initiated by Ford management in 2021 between the Almussafes plant and the Saarlouis plant in Germany to determine which of them would produce new electric cars and continue operating beyond the year 2025. The bureaucracies of IG Metall and the UGT pressured workers to accept cuts to jobs, wages and working conditions, supposedly to ‘save jobs’.
From the beginning, the World Socialist Web Site and the Ford Action Committee of rank-and-file workers in Saarlouis explained that the bureaucracies intended for this fratricidal competition to end in plant closures and massive job losses. The German and Spanish union leaders confronted the workers of Saarlouis and Almussafes. The WSWS noted in December 2021: “the concessions obtained in this way are supposedly intended to ‘secure the site’. But so far, those concessions have only paved the way for plant closures.”
The UGT bureaucracy responded to the WSWS call to fight independently of the union bureaucracy with a video on January 24, 2022. The video noted: “During this last season you will have heard a lot of news about the situation and the future of our factory, Opinions and doubts about our ability to negotiate good agreements, also criticisms, and even some that are outside of reality [en referencia al WSWS].”
The biggest promoters of fake news were, in fact, UGT and IG Metall, which promised to preserve jobs, but worked with management to close plants, while imposing pay cuts and precarious contracts.
In February, the permanent closure of the Saarlouis plant was confirmed, leaving only 1,000 workers of the original 7,000 by the end of 2025. In addition, 1,500 jobs will be lost in auxiliary industries. Last week, Ford Germany announced a new cut; Several thousand jobs are at stake, mainly in administration, marketing, sales, services and development located in the center of Cologne-Merkenich.
Having worked closely with IG Metall to cut jobs, Ford, which earned $10.4 billion in 2023, is now proceeding with mass layoffs at the Almussafes plant in Valencia, even though it ‘won’ the competition Bidding. The future of the plant is uncertain.
The company also reneged on its promise to develop an electric vehicle by 2027. Ford now says only a hybrid model will be developed starting that year. Upon learning of this news, just a month ago, UGT stated that ‘despite the difficulties that we will still have to overcome, and taking into account the situation of uncertainty that we have experienced in recent months, and which became truly worrying, today we can to say that we carry very good news.” This ‘good news’ translated into the announcement of 1,622 layoffs.
Ford subcontractors, however, have raised the alarm that even this contract might not happen. Several of them have pointed out that by now, Ford should have sent them requests for quotations (RQFs) for the production of parts and machinery necessary for the new hybrid vehicle.
A supplier told Economia Digital: ‘if something moved, we should know about it and there is nothing.’ Another said: ‘People are scared. …The only thing we know is that we are going to have a bad time.’
Ford’s latest Layoff Plan re-exposes the UGT’s fraudulent promise that working with management to cut wages would preserve jobs. UGT is accepting the loss of jobs without even a symbolic protest or a strike. In a meeting on June 15, their only proposal was to carry out job cuts with the same conditions as the previous ones, via early retirements and voluntary layoffs.
The UGT’s claim that improving severance pay or obtaining early retirement will solve workers’ problems are lies. What is proposed is a devastating assault on the industrial and social fabric of the province of Valencia.
But the spokesperson for the UGT Ford, Carlos Faubel, proposes ‘social peace’. Last week he said that, from now on, UGT is ‘in another scenario, in the negotiation and in the possibilities of solving this in a positive way for everyone.’ And he adds, “we are convinced that the company would not have any problem in showing its availability and its part so that all this comes to fruition and we maintain social peace, and the vehicle planned for 2027 is a success.” .
Ford responded in a predictable manner. In this farce, which workers at Ford and other industries have seen time and again, management said it had responded to UGT’s request to rehire 1,000 of those laid off, in 2027, when production of the new one could begin. vehicle. Workers cannot trust Ford, which has broken all its promises.
Ford’s layoff plans reveal critical lessons that must be absorbed by workers at Ford Valencia and elsewhere.
Firstly, the entire union apparatus, both in Spain and Germany, tried to divide the workers at the national level, suppressing the class struggle and imposing the dictates of the management. Ford Valencia and UGT acted in Almussafes in the same way that IG Metall and Ford Germany acted in Saarlouis. They facilitated layoffs by tricking workers into blocking strikes and keeping production going until plant closure, which has occurred in Saarlouis and increasingly threatens in Almussafes.
There is no nationalist perspective to win these struggles. Automakers, operating on all continents of the world, make decisions on a global scale, depending on sales, access to raw materials, changes in regulatory costs and public subsidies. Meanwhile, unions tie workers to a national framework, and then pit workers from one country against another to provide the most ‘competitive’ conditions for automakers.
Massive fights have broken out across the auto industry in Europe and North America over the past two years, but unions worked together to keep contract fights divided along national lines, undermining workers’ power.
Secondly, the Spanish bourgeoisie relies on pseudo-leftist parties such as Sumar to subordinate workers to a nationalist and pro-war perspective.
The vice president of the Government and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, who recently resigned as leader of Sumar after its debacle in the European elections, issued a brief statement: “Today we are seeing an ERE that is presented at Ford, which affects more than a thousand workers, with a company that has eloquent benefits.” However, she quickly washed her hands of the situation, cynically stating that this “is not the responsibility of the Ministry of Labor.”
Díaz has a direct political responsibility for what is happening. In 2020 she was appointed Minister of Labor. Her signature measure was a labor reform that continued with the most reactionary elements of the one approved in 2012 by the right-wing Popular Party. This reform allows companies like Ford to impose layoffs through the ERE without incurring losses or requiring authorization from the Ministry of Labor.
The Spanish PSOE-Sumar government has also aggressively pushed to join the US-led trade war against Chinese electric vehicle (EV) exports. These tariffs could reach up to 48 percent. It is a denunciation of Sumar’s support for US and EU policy that aims to strangle and subjugate China, if necessary through war.
The workers of Ford Almussafes cannot tie their future to pseudo-leftists like Díaz or the UGT bureaucracy. Time is running out to avoid the closure of the Almussafes plant, as happened in Saarlouis.
To avoid this, workers must organize beyond national borders, independently and against their works councils, forming grassroots committees democratically controlled by the workers themselves. He World Socialist Web Site urges the workers of Valencia to oppose the betrayals of the UGT and to build the International Workers Alliance of Base Committees (AIO-CB) to organize the fight against Ford.
(Originally published in English on June 20, 2024)
