Ford Motor Company’s determination to halt production at its plant in Saarlouis, Germany in 2025 is component of the major global assault on the social gains and rights of the performing class considering the fact that the 1930s.
At stake are not only the futures of the households of the 4,600 directly employed workers but also a further 1,500 staff in the neighbouring provider providers and the economic life of the overall region, in which numerous tens of hundreds of jobs rely on the auto field. The Ford-Saarlouis workforce is agent of staff all-around the environment whose livelihoods are getting wrecked.
World automobile firms are utilizing the shift to significantly less sophisticated electric motors to reorganize the whole output system and squeeze just about every past ounce of revenue out of workers. Ford claimed a earnings of just about €9 billion on revenue of €115 billion for 2021. CEO Jim Farley announced that the enterprise aims to obtain an functioning return of 10 p.c by 2026.
The company’s most crucial aides in this are the trade unions and their functions council reps. They agree with the companies on wage and occupation cuts, suppress any resistance to them and divide employees by participating in off one particular location from a further. The “bidding contest” concerning the Ford vegetation in Saarlouis and Valencia, in which equally the German IG Metall and Spanish UGT unions participated, is only the shabbiest variety of this rigged match.
Nevertheless the restructuring of the automobile business is only just one front in the capitalists’ world-wide offensive versus the doing the job class. The spectacular rise in inflation—a consequence of trillion-dollar state giveaways to the economical markets and the NATO offensive versus Russia—is driving a great number of working course households into poverty and hardship. The “profits ahead of lives” coverage in the pandemic has brought about thousands and thousands of fatalities globally and lifelong illnesses for even additional. The huge sums used on rearmament and war are being recouped through cuts in schooling, overall health treatment and social companies.
Although thousands and thousands of staff throughout the world are shedding their livelihoods, the fortunes of shareholders and the multimillion-greenback salaries of top managers proceed to increase.
50 years of the automotive business in Saarland
Saarland, located in the border triangle of Germany, France and Luxembourg with a populace of just underneath 1 million, has been specially tricky strike by this upheaval. Its financial advancement exhibits great parallels to the Ruhr space.
Listed here, as there, the coal and steel industries ended up at the centre of economic everyday living until finally the postwar period of time. In 1960, additional than 125,000 men and women had been nonetheless utilized in Saarland’s mining and steel industries by the early 1970s, this determine was significantly less than half, and unemployment experienced risen over 15 %.
The colliery die-off began in the 1960s and lasted until finally 2002. The announcement of the closure of the Ford plant in Saarlouis fell nearly accurately on the working day the very last colliery closed 20 a long time in the past. Mining’s demise was accompanied by the winding up of the Saarland metal industry. In the meantime, of the more than 125,000 men and women utilized in coal and metal, only around 7,000 steelworkers from Saarstahl and Dillinger Hütte continue to be.
The shutdown of Saarland’s coal and metal industries acquired Oskar Lafontaine, as Social Democratic Get together (SPD) state premier, and Peter Hartz as labour director of Dillinger Hütte and Saarstahl, among other individuals, their spurs to acquire on bigger jobs. IG Metall and SPD member Peter Hartz, whose brother Kurt headed the IG Metall in Völklingen for a few many years, turned head of human sources at the VW Group in 1993 and in 2002 devised the “labour market and welfare reforms” named following him for Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD).
Like the Ruhr region, in which a new Opel plant commenced generation on a previous coal mine internet site in 1962, the point out authorities sought to draw in automotive providers to Saarland in an effort to mitigate the outcomes of the coal and metal disaster.
In 1968, generation of car or truck components for other Ford vegetation and for Renault started in Saarlouis. The to start with Ford, an Escort, rolled off the line on January 16, 1970, with 2,000 staff used at the time. The plant was Ford’s 14th creation facility in Europe.
For the firm, the decision of locale was a lucrative selection. It secured positive aspects above competitors in the rapidly developing European market. The geographic spot in the border triangle was useful for materials and exports. And the federal and point out governments granted Ford large concessions and subsidies.
Simply because of growing unemployment thanks to the slow death of coal mining, then-Chancellor Ludwig Erhardt experienced develop into included in negotiations with Ford. At the plant’s opening ceremony, Henry Ford II reported that the business had selected the internet site “also since of the encouragement and assist we received from the governing administration of the Saarland and from the German government.”
Considering that 1970, additional than 15 million cars have been created in Saarlouis. Eighty per cent of these ended up exported to extra than 80 nations around the world around the globe. From 2,000 in 1970, the workforce grew to 4,600 in 1971 and 8,100 in 1978, the greatest amount in the plant’s background. Thereafter, the workforce dimensions fluctuated with the transform of models and the ups and downs of revenue.
The tempo of function and productiveness ended up continually elevated. In 1987, for case in point, Ford became one particular of the 1st automakers to introduce “just in time” supply of automobile elements, lessening stock expenditures and outsourcing full manufacturing parts to less expensive suppliers.
Just a single yr afterwards, Saarlouis grew to become the pilot plant for the introduction of “just in sequence.” “Just in time” was hence prolonged to all types generated at the plant. Suppliers sent the sections and components for pre-planned simultaneous manufacturing of the various types.
10 a long time later, in 1998, the Ford Saarlouis Industrial Park was made right subsequent to the auto plant, where suppliers set up their creation services in the fast vicinity of the manufacturing facility. The Saarland state govt subsidized the construction of the facility to the tune of €100 million. Some of the supplier elements are transported immediately to the Ford assembly line via electric powered monorail systems or tunnels.
Just a handful of several years ago, Ford announced it had mounted a new hot forming plant in the new Boron corridor, on an area of about 6,000 sq. meters, roughly the size of a soccer industry. This can process extremely-high-strength and notably light-weight boron metal parts on internet site and has—at that time the only 1 in the automotive industry—a entirely automated unloading procedure. Employees hope that at the very least this modern day facility and the full stamping plant will continue being in put following 2025.
The Saarlouis plant also underscores the important unity of the working class, no matter of nationwide identities. Staff from France and Luxembourg get the job done with each other with their colleagues from Germany. In 2015, far more than 1,000 workers crossed the border every day, including 600 French nationals. The family members of numerous of the plant’s staff appear from Turkey, Yugoslavia, Italy, Spain, Morocco and other nations around the world.
As not long ago as 2019—just prior to the last round of layoffs—7,200 folks have been still operating at Ford in Saarlouis. A calendar year earlier, the new functions council less than Markus Thal took up business. Soon thereafter, in December 2018, the first action was taken to halt creation. At that time, it was declared that Ford would stop output of the C-Max in June 2019, opposite to a functions settlement that certain manufacturing right up until the stop of 2019. As a outcome, the night time change was cancelled, and 1,600 work had been lower.
At the time, the latest IG Metall Völklingen Director Lars Desgranges reacted to management’s conclusion to throw the aged firm agreement in the trash by demanding a new a single. “And that is when we say: If we definitely have to give up the C-Max in get to create a standpoint for this plant, then we also want to have this point of view agreed upon in a functions arrangement. We want prolonged-term stability for the site with investment decision commitments.”
Ford never designed such a dedication. Rather, 1,000 a lot more employment ended up removed the workforce now stands at just beneath 4,600. Yet again and once again, the cutbacks ended up supported by the IG Metall works council associates with vacant guarantees that they served to “secure the generation site.” The workforce was thus shocked when Ford introduced three weeks back that it would stop output and hence, in all probability, will close the plant in 2025.
Defend every work!
What is about to transpire is a catastrophe, not only for the workers right influenced but for future generations as properly. It is time to learn the classes from the activities of Ford workers, several of whom have used far more than half their lives at the plant.
The instances when shed careers were replaced by careers of equivalent value are prolonged long gone. If new careers are produced, they are at most those people at minimum wage, mainly in the logistics sector. In the Ruhr metropolis of Bochum, in which a few Opel plants when used 20,000 staff, DHL now operates a big logistics centre on the previous plant website, and the Ruhr University has many investigate services. All that stays of Opel is a recently developed European central warehouse with 700 workers.
The “bidding competition” between Valencia and Saarlouis, in which the is effective councils of both plants sought to outdo just about every other with proposals for more rewarding manufacturing, have also served to lessen generation expenditures as a result of massive job cuts, wage reductions, for a longer period operating several hours, extra versatile change products, extra time and so on. Even if the Valencia plant continues to be, which is by no implies certain, the staff there will face a great deal worse problems.
It is important to consider up the struggle to defend all work, wages and social rights. This calls for breaking with the unions and making independent rank-and-file action committees to arrange the struggle towards the plant closure and establish inbound links with employees in other web-sites and nations. The Worldwide Committee of the Fourth Intercontinental and the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Occasion) have established the Intercontinental Employees Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) for this goal.
The building of independent action committees is immediately connected to the battle for a socialist perspective. Without the need of breaking the energy of the massive firms and the fiscal aristocracy, not a one problem can be solved. Only the expropriation of the firms and banks devoid of compensation generates the problems for the democratic regulate about output. Only then is it probable to build output in accordance to a strategy in the interests of the functioning course and social demands.
All over the world, massive course struggles are brewing, and in some nations around the world, this sort of as Sri Lanka, they are now nicely superior. In this context, all Ford work need to also be defended.
Get in touch with the Ford Action Committee! Deliver a WhatsApp information to: +491633378340
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