Union as well as non-union workers don’t like to read about layoffs. But with the current economic crunch, they have come to expect it.
Now comes a report that Ford intends to cut jobs and close plants in North America as it hires more workers for its factories in Russia. Ouch.
According to Bloomberg, the automaker plans to hire an additional 1,500 workers at a Russian plant near St. Petersburg in order to increase production of vehicles to 125,000 units next year. The factory makes the Ford Focus hatchback, Russia’s best selling foreign-brand car in 2007. The plant will start making the Ford Mondeo this year. That would be an increase of about 75 percent over the year before.
Ford hopes that Russia and other Eastern European countries will be increasing sales for Ford’s Europe division. In 2007, Ford Europe sold 1.92 million vehicles.
Meanwhile, about 33,600 Ford factory workers in the U.S. left their jobs through buyouts or retirement since 2006.
Our take? Unless the UAW intends to set up shop in Russia, we don’t think they are too happy over seeing jobs in the U.S. being traded for jobs in Russia. Perhaps we will be hearing of contract talks taking place between the Big Three and the UAW concerning workers in Russia in the not-to-distant future.