Ford shuts down functions in Brazil, destroying tens of hundreds of positions
Ford declared on January 11 that it will close its production of cars in Brazil, shutting down its three vegetation in the metropolitan areas of Camaçari, in the point out Bahia Taubaté, in the condition of São Paulo and Horizonte, in the condition of Ceará. In accordance to Ford, 5,000 employees will be laid off in Brazil. But tens of countless numbers more work opportunities are instantly connected with its output chain, and a wave of dismissals is expected.
In a statement to its Brazilian prospects, Ford declared: “As you know, the world-wide automotive business is undergoing a transformation method driven by new and emerging systems in connected companies, electrification and autonomous cars, with shopper requires and regulatory objects reshaping the market.”
This restructuring of manufacturing is, in other terms, a significant destruction of employment and wage cuts globally remaining enacted by Ford and the full automobile sector. The most up-to-date wave of occupation and expense cuts commenced several years in the past, escalating in 2018 and 2019 with a major downturn in the vehicle field already then on the horizon.
In 2018, Ford announced a around the globe restructuring aimed at a multibillion-greenback reduction in fees. “The aim is to streamline the corporation. It’s a cascading process. It will signify a reduction in workforce,” explained Mark Truby, the company’s vice president of international communications. The following year, the firm fired 7,000 white-collar workers and laid off 12,000 workers as it closed five European vegetation.
In Brazil, Ford closed a person of its principal amenities, a truck manufacturing facility in São Bernardo do Campo, in the São Paulo metropolitan space, in Oct 2019. On that event, 3,000 immediate workforce and 1,500 outsourced personnel ended up laid off, not to point out the approximately 20,000 workers at the related car pieces vegetation.
The slashing of jobs staying promoted now by Ford follows thousands of other layoffs in Brazil’s vehicle business that happened previous 12 months.
Very last December, Mercedes-Benz announced that it would shut down its car generation in Brazil, firing the 370 employees at its luxury car or truck plant. Renault-Nissan slashed more than 1,000 jobs in 2020, and Volkswagen declared that it would reduce a single third of its workforce, having opened on Monday a voluntary layoff software for this intent.
Ford’s announcement of the closure of its crops was answered by staff with protests. On Tuesday, contract and outsourced staff from the Ford Northeast Industrial Complex in Camaçari demonstrated at the factory gates demanding to hold their careers. A new protest was held the upcoming day in entrance of the Legislative Assembly of Bahia (Alba), the place associates of the Camaçari Metalworkers Union achieved with Alba President Nelson Leal.
In Taubaté, in which Ford provides engines and transmissions, a demonstration was held on Tuesday. Staff voted to established a vigil to block both people and supplies from moving into and exiting the manufacturing unit for an indefinite period.
The unions are, in transform, previously making ready a betrayal of the workers’ resistance to work cuts and the closure of vegetation.
The Camaçari Metalworkers Union, connected to the CTB union federation and the Maoist Communist Occasion of Brazil (PCdoB), now can take Ford’s closures for granted. In accordance to the president of the union and PCdoB activist, Júlio Bonfim: “[The] way out so that thousands of staff really do not reduce their work opportunities … [is] the development of an automobile components industrial park … or either the arrival of yet another automaker [that] can ensure jobs, investments and, as a result, the powerful stream in the overall economy of the Metropolitan Area [of Salvador].”
This corporatist vision is the same advocated by the governor of Bahia, Rui Costa of the Personnel Celebration (PT), whom Bonfim is signing up for in a “working team,” which, according to the union alone, “is searching for organizations intrigued in investing in the industrial park in which Ford Camaçari’s headquarters employed to be, thought of the major automotive plant in South The united states.”
The Metalworkers Union of Taubaté and Location (Sindmetau), joined to the Slice union federation and the PT, is operating to divert the Ford workers’ struggle by vacant requires to the point out. To satisfy these treacherous reasons, the primary leaders of the Lower, which includes the CUT’s president, Sérgio Nobre, were being mobilized to take part in a meeting held Wednesday on Sindmetau.
The most important evaluate adopted at this assembly was “the keeping of a public listening to in the Legislative Assembly of São Paulo,” advocated by PT condition congressman Teonilio Barba, who declared that “the intention is to find increased involvement of the point out authorities.” The CUT’s president also declared: “All force is wanted at this time. The country is deindustrializing because the governing administration is encouraging deindustrialization.”
The unions and get-togethers like the PT and PCdoB, as they operate to divert workers’ opposition into safe and sound channels within the bourgeois state, search for to create an opposition to the administration of Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro’s that is primarily based on the reactionary passions of Brazilian countrywide capitalism.
Talking to his supporters outside the governing administration palace on Tuesday, Bolsonaro reported, “I’m sorry for 5,000 careers misplaced,” but “Ford has unsuccessful to convey to the fact.” According to him, “They want subsidies.” “Do you want to keep providing them 20 billion [reais], as you have carried out in modern decades?” he reported in reference to the incentives paid by the Brazilian government to Ford since 1999 (equal to US$ 3.85 billion).
In response to Bolsonaro, the president of the Nationwide Association of Motor Auto Manufacturers (Anfavea), Luiz Carlos Moraes, declared that these subsidies would have functioned as “a way to accurate the distortions of the Brazilian tax program,” according to O Globo. “We have been pointing for a long time to measures that have to have to be taken to make improvements to competitiveness in Brazil,” mentioned Moraes. This consists primarily of a professional-capitalist tax reform.
Anfavea’s arguments are not in any way distinctive from those people of unions and bourgeois nationalist events like the PT and PCdoB. The Cut and other union federations for a long time have sophisticated as their fundamental plan the generation of tax incentives for firms, especially in the automobile marketplace. They criticize the governments that succeeded the PT in electrical power for not possessing an “auto program” to stimulate competitiveness for production in Brazil.
Defending the exact same perspective as Anfavea, of reducing t
axes to the capitalists, the PT’s Governor Rui Costa declared in a observe on Ford’s closure: “Unfortunately, there are hundreds of industries that are closing, 7 days soon after 7 days, considering that we have a nation that does not get treatment of its economic system, does not ensure institutional protection to its investors and does not make the vital reforms—including the tax [reform] that we need to have so terribly.”
Whilst preventing for the competitiveness of Brazilian capitalism, the unions are utilizing versus Ford personnel today the same techniques they utilized to suppress resistance to the closing of the São Bernardo do Campo plant in 2019.
On that event, the ABC Metalworkers Union, also connected to the Slash, did anything to dress in out a 42-day strike, isolating the personnel locally and avoiding impartial actions. It ended up signing an settlement that acknowledged the closing of the plant. The union then acted in practice as the consultant of a organization group interested in purchasing the plant, negotiating bank financial loans for the group and providing low wages to catch the attention of its investments. Even with this, the negotiations failed.
Ford employees urgently have to have to just take the reins of this wrestle and direct it in a different direction. It is essential to split with the corporatist unions, forming impartial rank-and-file committees to unify the battle among all the vegetation and with the working course as a complete.
It is also of elementary relevance to conquer the capitalist and nationalist point of view defended by the unions. Versus the malign world wide restructuring options of the transnational car organizations, staff need to progress their individual technique of a globally unified battle, which is fought for by the World Socialist Web Web page and the International Committee of the Fourth Worldwide.
