FORD is planning to close its plant in Southampton which makes the Transit van and employs 500 workers.
A meeting between Ford’s management and unions is scheduled for today, when the company are reportedly ready to announce the closure.
The company issued a statement yesterday saying it was ‘premature to discuss’ details of what its plans may be.
Unite also refused to confirm the mass sackings threat, with a spokesman telling News Line: ‘We’re aware of what’s happening and we’ll respond at the appropriate juncture.’
The US car giant announced yesterday that it is closing its factory at Genk in Belgium with the loss of 4,300 jobs.
Ford told the unions it will be closing the factory, which makes the Mondeo and S-Max models, in 2014.
Last month, Ford threatened job cuts in Europe as a result of weak sales.
Announcing the plans to close the factory in Genk yesterday, Stephen Odell, chairman and chief executive of Ford Europe, said: ‘The proposed restructuring of our European manufacturing operations is a fundamental part of our plan to strengthen Ford’s business in Europe and to return to profitable growth.’
As well as the workers at the plant, trade unions said that at least 5,000 jobs would go among subcontractors.
As well as Belgium, Ford has plants in Germany, Spain and others in the UK, where it employs 15,000 workers.
Ford’s sales fell almost 10% in Europe during the first half of 2012, to its lowest level in 17 years.
French carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen said yesterday that it had 11.5bn euros (£9.3bn, $14.9bn) in government financing for its car loans division.
Carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen has secured a 7bn euros ($9bn; £5.7bn) state guarantee for its finance division, Banque PSA Finance.
In return, the French government will be supervising the restructuring including job losses.
l banks must stop pretending that their bad debts will be repaid, Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King said on Tuesday night, as he demanded that the Treasury ‘recapitalise’ them again, courtesy of the taxpayer.
King compared the present situation with the 1930s when he said there had been a ‘pretence that debts could be repaid’, warning: ‘We must not repeat that mistake’.
The UK and other ‘major economies’ will remain weak until banks have sufficient capital to absorb ‘likely’ future losses from bad loans, King warned.
He said this was because the banks’ current ‘insufficient capital’ was continuing to deter them from lending to households and firms.
‘I am not sure that advanced economies in general will find it easy to get out of their current predicament without creditors acknowledging further likely losses, a significant writing down of asset values and recapitalisation of their financial systems,’ he said.
UK banks still need taxpayer help, King insisted, as they ‘find it expensive to borrow’ without central bank support.
