The announced loss of jobs due to the electrification of car factories begins to have figures. Ford CEO Jim Farley warned Tuesday in Detroit that “it takes 40% less labor to build an electric car, so…we have to insource, so everyone has a role in this growth.” ”, according to information from the Financial Times newspaper. The executive warned of the dark clouds that hung over the transition to the electric vehicle, but stressed that the automaker needs to produce more parts internally so that “everyone has a role” in that transition.
If the percentage of 40% mentioned by Jim Farley is applied to Spain, to the Ford factory in Almussafes, with a staff of close to 6,000 workers, the reduction in employment would affect some 2,400 people. The American multinational announced last June that it had chosen the Valencian factory to produce from 2025 at least two models of electric cars that it had yet to assign in Europe. The other option that the firm of the oval was considering was that of its plant located in the German town of Saarlouis. The final decision guaranteed the continuity and future of the Almussafes factory, although it was already noted at that time that it would entail a reduction in the workforce to adapt to the new production needs with electrification.
In this sense, the UGT union, the majority in Ford Almussafes, expressed last month its fear that they will be forced to negotiate an ERE in 2023 before the future arrival of electrification. This change will entail “less labor and jobs”, warned the union leader at the Carlos Faubel plant during the visit of the general secretary of UGT, Pepe Alvarez, to the Valencian factory. The Valencian plant, like other Spanish car factories, has been chaining temporary employment files since 2020 due to the shortage of components and also due to adjustments in the demand for vehicles.
Jim Farley noted that his company has set a goal of having half of global sales come from electric vehicles by 2030, as part of a broader shift among manufacturers. “We have a completely new supply chain to implement, in batteries, motors and electronic products, and diversity has to play an even greater role in that,” added the CEO of the multinational at the meeting sponsored by the Rainbow Push Coalition, an organization founded by civil rights activist Jesse Jackson.
The multinational Ford had 183,000 employees at the end of 2021. This year there have been several workforce cuts. “If [brand founder] Henry Ford came back to life, he would have thought the last 60 years weren’t that exciting, but right now he would love it because we’re completely reinventing the company,” Farley added.
Last week, Martin Sander, director of Ford’s electric car division (called Model e) in Europe, explained that the new electric age will bring about a significant reduction in working hours in the factory, between 30% and 50%. % less. He did so in a meeting with a small group of journalists, in which Cinco Dias participated, “I think it’s great for Spain and for Valencia that Ford considers making another substantial investment in electrification, but it’s also true that we have to restructure everywhere. . The time it takes to produce an electric vehicle is significantly less than the time it takes to produce a combustion engine vehicle. Depending on who you ask, it’s somewhere between 30-50%, so we’ll need less capacity to build vehicles in the future. That is a reality.
