The “uncertainty” due to the evolution of Covid-19 and car sales marks the return of workers
VALENCIA, Aug 24 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Ford factory in Almussafes (Valencia) restarts its activity this Monday, August 24, after a three-week break for holidays. The workforce returns to the factory with 200 workers and will lose another 150 during the next two months, from September to October, as agreed in the Employment Regulation File (ERE) agreed before the summer, which will finally be settled with 350 voluntary departures.
The return starts full of “uncertainty” given the evolution of the Covid-19 pandemic, both due to concerns about the health situation in the face of outbreaks, and due to the evolution of the automobile market, mainly in the international market, where the plant Ford Almussafes exports between 80 and 90% of its production.
From the UGT, its spokesperson and president of the Works Council, Carlos Faubel, has stated in statements to Europa Press that after the holidays they return with “the same or more uncertainty than before leaving”, both due to the spread of the coronavirus and the evolution of car sales that, as he has admitted, “are far from the desired normal” or that it is going to be a “quiet September.”
Faubel doubts that production levels can be maintained at one hundred percent and predicts that they will probably be forced to go to a new negotiating table to see what plans the multinational has until the end of the year. It should be remembered that production had already been lowered by 100 units, to manufacture a total of 1,640 per day.
September will also be a month of personnel movements and restructuring of work in the Valencian plant, due to the departure of the last 150 workers from the ERE that was negotiated before the summer period, he pointed out.
For his part, the CCOO spokesman at Ford Almussafes, José Arocas, has admitted that they face the return to work “with concern” given the increase in infections by Covid-19 that is observed but trusts that the reincorporation will go “without problems” . Of course, it will be necessary to see how the exports from the Valencian plant go before the evolution of the pandemic in the rest of the countries.
Also from STM-Intersindical Valenciana, Paco González, has expressed the “uncertainty” that exists both in this and in other sectors before this “damn pandemic” although he trusts that “Valencian society will overcome all these difficulties and so will Ford Almussafes “, with one of the youngest staff in the sector.
From the union they hope that both the management of the company and the public administrations are “at the height of the situation” as the staff has been and they point out that it is time to “all work with responsibility and decision, with the aim of asserting the leadership of Ford Almussafes in the face of the changes that are being experienced in the sector at a global level and also in the face of the decisions that the multinational will adopt in the short term.
Finally, the CGT spokesman, Mariano Bosch, has been “on the lookout” with the march of the outbreaks. When they closed the factory “everything was going quite well”, he recalled, and now he hopes that everything can continue to work “normally”.