From 750 to 500 employees. It is the reduction proposed by the UGT-PV union for the ERTE that proposes carrying forward the management of Ford Almussafes. The company stated that the measure would affect a maximum of 750 daily employees on a rotating basis, while the UGT union, the majority at the plant, has defended 500 workers.
This number of people affected corresponds “strictly” to the drop in production and not to the surplus of personnel derived from the situation in which the plant finds itself, pending the electrification plans for the Valencian factory and with only two models in production, Kuga and Transit, according to statements by the president of the works council, Carlos Faubel, reported by Agencia EFE.
The company proposed that in the vehicle plant there be a partial stoppage of 750 workers on a rotating basis where possible, with a maximum duration for each worker of 15 days, while in the Engine plant a stoppage equivalent to 4 days of production.
In the meeting held this Friday, UGT has also defended that the ERTE ends on March 28, which would mean an employment adjustment of a month and a half, given the management’s proposal that it be valid until April 30. Next Monday they will meet again and the negotiation could conclude, to apply the ERTE the next day, Tuesday, February 13.
Precisely next Monday and Tuesday there is no planned production at the engine plant or in the afternoon shift at the vehicle plant, a production situation that has already been recorded for some weeks in 2023.
In vehicle production, work in the afternoon shift is not expected for the week of February 19 to 23, so the ERTE would come into force at a time of medium production in vehicles and without production in engines.
UGT has warned that it negotiates this ERTE “in an exceptional manner” after the changes produced in the last meeting with the European management on February 5, in which it was stated that the company is working on an alternative to solve the problem that originated in Valencia before the uncertainty that the electric car currently generates and the commitment to hold a meeting with Ford’s global management in April. There he hopes that Ford’s commitment to the electrification of the Valencian plant will be clarified, which today has a workforce of 4,900 workers after the ERE implemented.
For its part, STM-Intersindical Valenciana explains that the workforce has already lost close to 10% of purchasing power due to the “Electrification Agreement” signed by UGT-PV and the company and assures that, despite this, “we continue without knowing anything.”
It is in this framework that they point out that they would agree with the ERTE, as long as there is compensation of 100% of the salary. and a commitment on the part of the company that, in the event that the worker ceases to be part of the workforce, it will complement the subsidy consumed. It is in this case that the union assures that the company responds that “they are not going to pay 100% to have the staff at home, nor in the workplace without performing production tasks.”
Currently, the Valencian plant has 300 vehicles of the renewed Kuga in production, which is being launched until it reaches 730 units per day, and about 230 of the Transit van.
In total there are about 950 production units planned, which will be reached in a month or a month and a half with the full production of the new Kuga, without forgetting that the production of the Transit will cease definitively at the end of March and the factory will be left with a single model.
