Usa, auto, mercato lavoro Nyt 06-01-24
Ford intende eliminare 30 000 posti di lavoro e 14
stabilimenti
Micheline
Maynard
Programma Ford per i prossimi
6 anni :
- chiusura di 14 stabilimenti;
- tagli di 30 000
posti di lavoro.
Il piano fa parte della ristrutturazione
settore auto USA pressato da concorrenza estera, che si è presa oltre il 40%
del mercato americano.
- Due mesi fa
annunciato analogo programma di GM, per chiusura totale o in parte di 12 stabilimenti,
e tagli occupazionali simili. - Compresi i tagli di Chrysler, i tre grandi gruppi americani dell’auto hanno eliminato o programmato
di eliminare quasi 140 000 posti di lavoro dal 2000, pari a 1/3 degli
addetti del Nord America, tornando al numero di addetti auto del secondo
dopoguerra. - I numeri di addetti
in Nord America dei gruppi auto giapponesi, tedeschi e sudcoreani è di circa
60 000, pari circa ai tagli annunciati da Ford e GM, ma rappresentato
da forza lavoro più giovane e meno
costosa, scelta non in base alla qualifica ma alle capacità di resistenza fisica e di lavoro di squadra. - I produttori
stranieri vendono oltre 4/10 auto e camion vendute negli USA; hanno creato decine
di migliaia di posti di lavoro dall’Ontario all’Ohio, nel Sud e in Messico. - Grazie alla crescita dei gruppi stranieri non ci sono stati cali occupazionali nel
settore auto americano, che si aggira sui 1,1 mn. di addetti, compresi
quelli della componentistica.
Negli anni 1990 Ford sfruttava 100 000 lavoratori a
orario; i tagli annunciati sono circa 1/3 degli addetti-orari in Nord America,
dove ha 87 000 lavoratori; Ford taglierà anche 4 000 impiegati, pari
al 10% degli impiegati, e il 12% dei dirigenti.
[Vedi su art Wsws, 24.01.06 breve storia declino gruppi americani dell’auto,
tagli a previdenza, tradimento sindacato auto UAW]
Nyt 06-01-24
Ford
Eliminating Up to 30,000 Jobs and 14 Factories
By MICHELINE MAYNARD
DEARBORN, Mich., Jan. 23 – The Ford Motor
Company said Monday that it would close as many as 14 factories and cut up to
30,000 jobs over the next six years. It was the latest move in a
fundamental restructuring of Detroit’s traditional
auto companies, hit hard by foreign competitors, who have taken more than 40
percent of the American market.
The moves by Ford, the second-largest automaker in the United States, come two months after General Motors, the
industry leader, said it would close all or part of a dozen factories and
eliminate a similar number of jobs.
Including
cuts that took place at the Chrysler Corporation, the Big Three automakers have
eliminated or announced plans to eliminate nearly 140,000 jobs since 2000,
including salaried positions. That is about one-third of their North American
payroll, a rollback to a work force
size not seen since the end of World War II. "This may not be the end,
but it is certainly the beginning of the end of the automobile industry as we
knew it," said Gary N. Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University
in Worcester, Mass.
While the Big Three are visibly
shrinking, their combined moves do not spell the end of automotive
manufacturing in the United
States. But the geographic footprint has largely shifted south, where a new auto
industry is flourishing.
Japanese,
German and South Korean companies now employ 60,000 people, or about the same
number by which Ford and G.M. have said they will shrink. But foreign makers are creating
a younger, cheaper work force, sidestepping Detroit’s
unemployed and the higher pay and benefits packages that Detroit workers were getting.
The United Automobile Workers union,
which represents workers in the United
States, said the announcement by Ford was
"deeply disappointing and devastating" for its members. The cutbacks
signal a new reality for auto workers – one in which $30-an-hour wages and generous
benefits are no longer a guarantee.
Ford’s share price closed up 42 cents,
at $8.32, on the New York Stock Exchange.
The cuts at Ford are taking place under a turnaround plan it is calling the
Way Forward, marking its second attempt to revamp the company in the last
four years. Ford’s goal is to become as nimble as Toyota and Honda, cutting
through layers of bureaucracy that have stymied the development of
innovative vehicles like hybrid electric cars. It also highlights Ford’s
American roots and aims to create clearer identities for its Ford, Lincoln and
Mercury brands.
Rising gas and steel prices and strong
competition from abroad have intensified the challenge to Ford and G.M.,
already burdened by rising health care costs and a legacy of promising rich
pension packages and other retirement benefits. More important, both companies
have failed to find the right formulas to satisfy the American car buyer.
The result has been a swift slide in
market share. Ford, which held about 25 percent of the car market in 2000,
held only 17.4 percent in 2005. Much of the drop is a result of the decline
in popularity of big sport utilities, which fueled profits and market share at Ford during the 1990’s, when it had about
100,000 hourly workers.
Monday’s
cuts at Ford affect about a third of its hourly payroll in North America, where
it has 87,000 workers. The company is also cutting another 4,000 salaried employees, or about
10 percent of its white-collar force, and has pledged to reduce its executive
ranks by 12 percent.
Foreign
manufacturers, who now sell more than 4 of every 10 cars and trucks in the United States, have created tens of thousands of
jobs at new factories from Ontario to Ohio, across the South and in Mexico.
Because
of their growth, there has been no net loss in American automotive jobs over
the last 10 years, according to James P. Womack, an
author and specialist in manufacturing efficiency. Auto industry employment has held steady at about 1.1 million workers,
including those at parts companies, he said.
In
fact, those foreign companies, which collectively
employed about 60,000 workers at the North American plants last year, are expanding their factories. Later
this year, Toyota
will open a new truck plant in San Antonio, and
it is building another factory in Ontario.
Earlier this month, Nissan’s chief executive, Carlos Ghosn, who became a management
model for leading his company’s successful turnaround during the last six
years, said Nissan might expand its two-year-old factory in Canton, Miss.
While foreign automakers have hired
some former Detroit
workers, most of their workers have no automotive experience and were chosen
through rigorous screening processes that stress physical endurance and a bent
for working in teams.
With a smaller market share, Ford has
its plants in North America operating at only three-quarters capacity,
sparking the company’s decision Monday to close assembly plants in Wixom,
Mich., outside Detroit; Hapeville, Ga., outside Atlanta; and Hazelwood, Mo., a
suburb of St. Louis.
Two more assembly plants will close, Ford said, although it did not name them. The auto company is
also shutting a transmission plant in Batavia, Ohio, near Cincinnati,
and analysts said they expected that other Ford parts plants would also shut
once the company decided which assembly plants to close.
Ford is also cutting one shift of
workers at its plant in St. Thomas, Ontario, two hours west of Toronto.
Ford’s chief executive, William Clay
Ford Jr., called the cuts "a painful last resort." But he said the
company’s plan contained "the vision and strategic focus to rebuild the
business."
"With it," Mr. Ford said,
"we will retake the American roadway."
Mr. Ford, who unveiled the earlier
transformation program in 2002, shortly after he installed himself as chief
executive, said that plan had achieved its goals but was not enough in the face
of stiff foreign competition.
"We will not stand for business as
usual," Mr. Ford said.
But Ford held out hope for some workers,
saying that it planned to create a new factory somewhere in North
America to build small cars at a low cost. Ford executives
declined to say when the plant would be built – or whether it planned to employ
unionized workers in the United States
or Canada.
The idea seemed an echo of G.M.’s
original intent with the Saturn Corporation, whose plant in Spring Hill, Tenn.,
was meant to prove that American workers could build cars that could compete
with Japanese autos.
In fact, Saturn’s vehicles lured buyers
away from Toyota
and Honda in the early 1990’s, when the cars were first on sale. But Saturn
cars subsequently declined in popularity after G.M. decided to focus more
attention on developing S.U.V.’s.
And although G.M. is trying to
rejuvenate Saturn, it announced last year that it would close an assembly line
at Spring Hill, placing the plant’s long-term future in doubt.
Ford’s announcement of the Way Forward
plan on Monday ended weeks of speculation that it would eliminate some product
lines. But on Monday, Ford declined to comment on specific vehicles.
Shortly before it outlined the program
on Monday, Ford said it lost $1 billion
before taxes on its automotive operations in 2005, up from an $850 million loss
in 2004. It posted a full-year profit of $2 billion, down from $3.5 billion in
2004, but its third consecutive annual profit. It has managed to keep
making money across the board because of good results overseas and the strength
of its financial services division.
But in December, Standard & Poor’s
Ratings Services cut its rating on Ford’s debt two notches deeper into junk,
just as S.& P. did at G.M. after it unveiled its reorganizing plan.
S.& P. warned that Ford was
particularly vulnerable to steps that G.M. might take to improve its market
share, like the steep employee discounts it offered consumers last summer. But
the ratings agency, which warned that G.M. could be forced to restructure under
Chapter 11 protection, said it was not concerned that Ford would have to do so.
One reason, analysts said, is that the
Ford family, which controls the company through a special class of stock, would
do everything to prevent such a move.
On Monday, Mr. Ford’s cousins, Edsel B.
Ford II and Elena Ford, looked on as Mr. Ford invoked his great-grandfather,
Henry Ford, in an effort to encourage Ford employees to be more innovative.
Mr. Ford recalled that Henry Ford built
his first car in a shed behind his Detroit
house, only to realize it was too big to get out the door. Instead, Mr. Ford
said, his great-grandfather knocked down a wall to drive it out.
"We intend to remind people every
day that if you want to build something that’s never been built before, you may
have to knock down a wall or two," Mr. Ford said.
But Wall Street was looking to Mr. Ford
for more specifics than the company provided in an hourlong presentation. Ford
officials, in fact, said the automaker would no longer issue annual earnings
guidance to analysts – a sharp departure from Ford’s past practice of stating
its goals in advance.
Indeed, the company said Monday only
that it expected to be profitable on its automotive operations in 2008, meaning
it would lose money on them this year and next.
Mark Fields, recently named president of
Ford’s operations for the Americas,
who was the author of the Way Forward plan, also said that Ford meant to
stabilize its declining market share, and eventually gain sales. But he did not
say when that would happen or what share of the American market Ford eventually
expected to hold.
Ford’s refusal to give more details on
its plant closing plans and financial targets was a contrast to the clearly
defined outline at Nissan by Mr. Ghosn, the Renault executive who took over the
company in 1999.
Nissan either met or exceeded the goals
in three programs outlined by Mr. Ghosn, who vowed six years ago to resign if
the company could not achieve its targets.
On Monday, Mr. Fields said in an
interview that he was approaching his job "as if my job is on the
line."
"Hopefully, if we’re
successful," Mr. Fields added, "I’ll share in the rewards, and if
not, I’ll share in the ramifications."
The New York Times
——————–
wsws 06-01-24
Ford
to cut 30,000 jobs in North America
By Joe Kay
Ford
Motor Company announced plans on Monday to eliminate between 25,000 and 30,000
jobs by 2012. This amounts to more than 20 percent of the company’s North American workforce, and
nearly 30 percent of its manufacturing jobs, where the bulk of the reductions
will take place. The Ford plan is only
the latest stage in a major assault by US automakers on the jobs, wages and
benefits of their workers, an assault that is having devastating
consequences throughout the US,
Canada
and other countries.
The
plan, dubbed the “Way Forward,” was outlined in a
meeting at the company’s headquarters in Dearborn,
Michigan. Citing increased
competition and a “crowded and fragmented” global auto market, CEO and Chairman
Bill Ford announced that the company “will be making painful sacrifices to
protect Ford’s heritage and secure our future.” He pledged that in the future
Ford, “will be able to deliver more innovative products, better returns for our
shareholders and stability in the communities where we operate.”
Return for shareholders and a shift
toward profitability in its North American division are the basic aims of the
restructuring. Ford has been under pressure from Wall Street to make major cuts
in costs over the past year, and has seen its bond rating reduced to junk
status. The job cuts were widely expected, particularly after Ford’s larger
US rival, General Motors, announced plans to cut tens of thousands of jobs late
last year. The cuts Ford announced Monday went much further than an outline
of the plan that it leaked to the press in December and reflected the company’s
determination not to undershoot Wall Street demands.
Ford’s stock price was up $0.42 on Monday,
or more than 5 percent—a consequence of larger-than-expected profit figures for
the fourth quarter, as well as a generally favorable reaction on Wall Street to
the new job-cutting plan. David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive
Research, told Dow Jones’s MarketWatch news service that the restructuring was
an “excellent start” for Ford.
Out
of Ford’s 43 assembly, stamping, Powertrain and casting plants, 14 will be shut
down over the coming six years. By 2008, Ford
executives announced, plants that will be closed include the Wixom Assembly
Plant, near Detroit, Michigan, which employs 1,567 workers; the
St. Louis Assembly Plant, which employs 1,445 workers; and the Atlanta Assembly
Plant, which employs 1,745 workers. Two additional unnamed assembly plants will
be closed by 2008 and two more by 2012.
In addition, Batavia Transmission,
employing 1,745 workers outside of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Windsor Casting, employing 684 workers in Canada,
will also be shuttered by 2008. The St. Thomas Assembly Plant in Ontario will lose one
shift, or 1,200 jobs.
The
plan, which will reduce Ford’s North American production capacity by 26
percent, is part of a broader strategy to reduce labor costs. Last year, Ford
began eliminating 4,000 salaried workers, and another 5,000 are set to be cut
as part of the “Way Forward.” This amounts to about 20 percent of the company’s
white-collar workforce.
In
addition to jobs, Ford is targeting health care and pension benefits. Bill Ford said on Monday that “health care and legacy costs are
enormous” and that “more progress is needed” in making cuts. With the
collaboration of the United Auto Workers union (UAW), Ford has already pushed
through health care concessions that are estimated to save the company $850
million annually and $5 billion in long-term liabilities. In his statements
Monday, Bill Ford directed his appeal for assistance not only to the union, but
also to the government, calling on business and government to work together to
find a way of reducing corporate health care and pension costs.
Ford’s
announcement follows close on the heels of the GM cuts, which include plans for
the elimination of 30,000 jobs in North America and the closure or scaling down
of nine plants by 2008. The new cuts come only four years after Ford’s last major retrenchment.
In January 2002, the company announced plans to eliminate 35,000 jobs worldwide
and 22,000 in North
America. In 2001, the other major US auto company, DaimlerChrysler,
initiated plans to eliminate 26,000 jobs.
The attack on automotive jobs is an
international phenomenon, and workers in Europe
have also been severely affected. Both GM and DaimlerChrysler have cut
thousands of workers in their German divisions, and German automaker Volkswagen
has followed suit. Globally, automakers have
been struggling to deal with overcapacity and increased international competition,
and have responded by cutting jobs and shifting operations to countries
with cheaper sources of labor.
The cutbacks at the Big Three have
cascaded throughout the auto industry and beyond. Ford’s major parts
supplier, Visteon, and GM’s major supplier, Delphi, have both announced major
job, wage and benefit cuts in the past year. In his speech on Monday, CEO Ford indicated that his company
will continue to escalate pressure on parts and material suppliers to reduce
costs. He said that it will seek to
reduce overall material costs $6 billion by 2010.
Ford’s suppliers will no doubt be forced
to follow through with their own job cuts and cost reductions. It is
estimated that a single job at an auto factory supports seven jobs in the wider
economy, which will produce a devastating impact on those areas where plants
are shut down. These are working
class communities that have already suffered from the general stagnation and
decline of wages over the past several years and the attack on social programs
and benefits.
Michigan workers have been hit hard by the 25-year assault on auto jobs in
what was once the center of US
auto production. The closure of the Wixom plant, as
well as the Windsor plant directly across the
Canadian border from Detroit,
will be yet one more setback. Tens of thousands of jobs are slated to be lost
in Michigan and the surrounding states of the
Midwest as part of the GM, Visteon and Delphi
cuts of the past year.
The closure of the Atlanta Assembly
plant adds to the GM cuts in that city, which include 3,000 workers at its
plant in nearby Doraville. And the scale-back at Ford’s St. Thomas Assembly
Plant follows GM’s decision to close one of its plants in Ontario and eliminate a shift in another,
leading to a total loss of 3,500 jobs in addition to the 1,200 cut by Ford.
In making the new cuts, Ford is responding to the continued
atrophy of its share of US
auto sales, which have declined steadily over the past decade and are now at an
all-time low of 17.4 percent. While Ford was able to post profits in 2005 of $2
billion, this was with a loss of $1.6 billion in North American production.
The profits were due in large part to a
$2.5 billion net income for Ford’s financing arm.
The US auto industry as a whole is in a
protracted state of decline, which began at least 25 years ago. Since 1979, the “Big Three”—GM, Ford and
Chrysler—have shed an astonishing 600,000 jobs. The companies have become
shadows of their former selves. At its
peak, GM employed more than 600,000 workers. After its latest cuts, the workforce
will only be about 120,000.
There is increasing talk of the
possibility that GM may end up in bankruptcy, a tool that would be used to
impose a new contract to eliminate job security guarantees and health care and
pension benefits. If GM does declare bankruptcy, Ford would likely do the same.
The auto giants may employ a similar tactic to what has been used by the major
airlines, which have exploited the bankruptcy courts to escape from their
so-called “legacy costs,” including billions in pension obligations.
The decline of the US auto industry is part of a
general decline of American manufacturing. As US companies have come under
increasing competition from abroad, those sections of the workforce that had
previously been able, through major struggles, to win certain concessions on
job security, wages and benefits are now considered to be the chief obstacles
to restoring profitability.
The working class has been left entirely
defenseless as its past gains have been eliminated. Ford and the rest of the auto industry have relied on the collaboration
of the UAW and the Canadian Auto Workers in pushing through the required cost
cutting. The trade union bureaucracies in the US and in Canada have
collaborated with management in imposing cuts, and have taken no steps to
oppose the massive assault on auto jobs. Bill Ford said on Monday that Ford
would seek to carry out the cuts “with the full collaboration of our union
partners,” with a justified confidence that this would be possible.
In response to the announcement of
30,000 job cuts, the UAW issued a statement announcing that the news is
“extremely disappointing and devastating” for Ford workers. However, the union
did not give any indications that it would seriously oppose the cuts in any
way, let alone call a strike to prevent the measures.
The union bureaucracy has pursued a
policy of increasingly close collaboration with management over the past
quarter century. The unions have sought to channel the anger of US workers
behind chauvinist attacks on foreign workers while attempting to keep them tied
to the Democratic Party, which has helped oversee the deterioration of living
standards. For her part, Democratic Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm
declared her support for Ford’s new plan, calling the cuts “tough business
decisions” that “will help the company regain its financial footing so it can
continue to be an industry leader.”
The feasibility of Ford’s strategy of
relying on the UAW was called into question, however, last November. Ford
workers nearly voted down the measure imposing new health care and pension
concessions, even though the concessions were supported by the union
bureaucracy. If the combined efforts of the unions and management are not able
to push through cost cuts, then more extreme measures may be used, including
bankruptcy.
The inability of the unions to oppose
the attack on auto jobs lies ultimately in their nationalist orientation and
their defense of the capitalist system, in which all of the decisions on jobs
and wages are ultimately decided by the profit interests of giant corporations.
The
defense of the social conditions of workers in the US, Canada and
internationally requires the mobilization of the international working class
for the defense of their common class interests and
on the basis of a socialist program, in which human needs are placed above
private profit. This includes protecting the jobs, living standards and communities
of workers and their families by taking the auto industry out of the hands of
the billionaire investors and wealthy executives and transforming it into a
publicly owned and democratically controlled enterprise.