Packing It In: Ford To Close Second European Plant

As funny as it would be to have a triple dip recession (a world first?), car manufacturing isn't a huge deal in the UK anymore. There would be a bigger number of newly unemployed staff if one of the smaller banks or insurance companies decided to offshore a contact centre but the real impact is the loss of skilled jobs in engineering, which the UK used to be very good at and very proud of. It's a real shame to lose more skilled engineering work but it's an even realer shame for the couple of thousand people who will be directly impacted.

@Battles not sure what you mean by "engineering jobs, whether skilled or semi-skilled". while some engineers are represented by white collar unions/works councils, I don't think you classify them as "skilled" or "semi-skilled" unless you are making value judgement on the quality of their work... Transit is engineered primarily in Europe, with some work done in the US. the same amount of engineering goes on no matter where the vehicles are built. process engineering and physical plant type roles would be lost with the closure of the plants in the UK, but not design engineering. same for closure of Genk. that goes away when programs are cancelled, which as yet has not been announced. and probably won't be given things as yet un-announced will be pushed back or re-scoped. in fact, moving product from one plant to another or modifying plants to build more products would result in _more_ process engineering/construction/etc work, albeit only in the places where the work is moving...

Well, just the regular old Transit. Ford makes it confusing because the Transit Connect is only really related in that it's a van. I assumed they would make them here because of the Chicken Tax, although they build Transit Connects in Turkey with seats and rip out the seats once they get here, so I suppose they could do the same with the Transit.