Things are getting tuff here at home with our car manufacturing industry first the magna now the falcon is looking shaky, whats next... the last sentence of this story is very interesting.

Andrew Trounson and Philip King | October 17, 2008

THE crisis in the automotive sector deepened yesterday with Ford confirming plans to shed a further 450 workers and flagging more production cuts through to the end of the year that will hit component makers and lead to additional job losses.

Hurt by the growing number of drivers ditching large cars such as the Falcon in favour of smaller vehicles, and a slowdown in car sales, Ford has added five days of production shutdowns through to the end of the year, and warned it could double that to 10 days. This is on top of the 13 days of shutdowns announced in August.

Holden is also planning more down days between now and the new year.

The cuts will hit component suppliers already reeling from production cutbacks in the industry. Ford signalled in August it would be cutting production from 360 vehicles a day to between 280 and 290.

"We fear there will be in excess of 1000 job losses in the components sector as a result of the Ford cutbacks," Australian Manufacturing Workers Union Victorian secretary Steve Dargavel told The Australian.

Component makers have already warned that 7000 jobs in the sector could go before the end of next year.

Ford is confident it can achieve the targeted cuts with voluntary redundancies, but uncertain Ford workers are set to cut back on their spending while workers at component makers will be nervous at the prospect of stand-downs or job-shedding.

"You don't go out as much, you spend less on food and you save up to have your car serviced," Ford plant worker Andrew Reardon, 32, told The Australian.

Mr Reardon, who is paying off his house in Broadmeadows, near the assembly plant in Melbourne's north, and looks after his 73-year-old mother, said he would not be volunteering.

He is worried that if forced out he'll be left hunting for a less well-paid job. "A lot of us are freaking out," said Mr Reardon, who defied a company ban on talking to the media.

The AMWU says Ford workers could be reduced to working only two or three days a week until the new year. Unless they made up for that time with holidays, workers would only get half-pay on shutdown days.

The uncertainty for workers is being exacerbated by Ford considering outsourcing 740 more jobs, the union says.

The job cuts bring to 1400 the total lay-offs announced by Ford in the past 15 months. In August, the company announced 350 cuts in manufacturing, and 600 jobs will go when it shuts the Geelong engine plant in 2010.

Victorian Premier John Brumby said he was disappointed by the job losses and called on employers to hold their nerve. "To all businesses and employers: I know times are tough, I know there is a lot of pressure on shareholders and companies, but companies have to make that extra effort at this point in time to hold people, to keep them," Mr Brumby said.

The latest cuts at Ford cover the whole business, including plant workers and office staff, and will be split roughly evenly between the Geelong and Broadmeadows plants.

"We're taking the right action to right-size our business," new Ford Australia boss Marin Burela told reporters at Broadmeadows yesterday.

"Clearly the economic conditions around the world and certainly some of the things we are facing in Australia have had a severe impact on us."

The latest generation FG Falcon was launched in May with the declared aim of dethroning Holden's Commodore. But it has failed to make a dent.

I'd heard falcon sales were up 9% and commodores were down.. not parity or dethroning, but definitely a dent..

Sad news though.. Ford international would be willing to sacrifice ford australia in the grand scheme of things we are a tiny market.. thats why the FG wasn't exported.. because it might take sales from US or Euro ford, that's my take anyway...

Sad to say it, but I think if things continue as they are, in 10 or 15 years, Ford Australia and Holden Australia will just be importers and resellers of international models and nothing more. The Australian car will be dead... Of course you won't hear that from them though, the commodore will be some rebadged GM car and we might well have a modeo badged as a Falcon or some other bigger model..

Wonder what the V8 supercars will be then...

It's not Ford Australia's fault. Or possibly it is indirectly. But it's what happens when people stop buying the Australian built cars. So it can be blamed on Ford Aus for not building a car here that people want to buy. People can winge and moan all they like about Ford Aus and Holden cutting jobs, first question I ask them is what car they own, generally it's not a Falcon or Commodore and you then point out that's exactly why jobs are being cut.

theyre not dead yet, expect them to come crying for billion dollar bailouts like everyone else these days....for the good of the country!! HA!! yeah right a rebadged import is "good for the country"