Welsh Town Prepares For Ford Plant Closure, But Unemployment At Record Lows

The biggest employer in the Welsh town of Bridgend for the past 40 years, the local Ford Motor (F) engine assembly plant, will close down in late September, throwing about 1,700 people out of work.

Ford blamed the closure of the 60-acre site located halfway between Cardiff and Swansea on “changing customer demand and cost.”

The closure will cost Ford $650 million in redundancy and pension payments.

The community is preparing itself not only for the loss of some high-paying jobs, but also for the ancillary effects on local businesses. The Ford plant indirectly supports jobs of about another 12,000 people in the local economy, estimated Madeleine Moon, the former Labour MP for Bridgend.

The GMB trade union, which represents Ford workers in Bridgend, said the average Ford salary is £41,000 [$53,000].

“I have never filled out a CV until now because I never had to,” said Dick Jenkins, a 47-year-old electrician, who has worked at the plant for three decades. “It’s scary. I know I’m not alone, but whatever happens next will only be the second job I have ever had.”

Jeff Beck, regional organizer for GMB described the planned closure as “a real hammer blow for the Welsh economy and the community in Bridgend.”

Ford was also the town’s largest business taxpayer – it shelled out £1.6 million [$2.07 million] in 2019-2020 according to property consultancy Altus Group. Ford said it will repay the £11 million [$14.3 million] in state aid it received from the Welsh government.

Although a number of other firms plan to build factories in the area – including British chemical firm INEOS and carmaker Aston Martin Lagonda – they are not expected to hire as many workers as Ford did.

The Trades Union Congress said that one in six workers in Bridgend are in the manufacturing sector, double the figure for the U.K.

“We’re not going to compete with low-cost economies even if we try. We want to attract jobs into Bridgend and elsewhere on the basis that we have a skilled workforce and a pipeline of training,” said Carwyn Jones, a Welsh Labour politician and former first minister of Wales.

Ford has two other factories in the U.K., a plant in Dagenham, east London, which makes diesel engines for vans, and a gearbox plant in Halewood, outside Liverpool.

After Bridgend closes, Wales will have only two automaking facilities, Toyota’s (TM) engine plant in Deeside and Aston Martin Lagonda’s new St Athan plant.

Some in Wales feel ignored by the London government.

“Wales is only equivalent to 5% of the English population, it gets forgotten about,” says Victoria Winckler, director of the Welsh thinktank the Bevan Foundation. “The U.K. government must not wash its hands of places in Wales.”

Welsh politicians are also angered by the huge £106 billion [$137 billion] plan to build a high-speed railway line connecting London with Birmingham – completely ignoring Wales.

“We are still waiting for them to electrify the railway between the capital [Cardiff] and Swansea, the second city, never mind high-speed,” said Huw David, a Labour councilor and leader of Bridgend county borough council.

Moreover, in recent years the Westminster government has scrapped plans for a £1.3 billion [$16.8 billion] Swansea tidal lagoon project and a £16 billion [$20.7 billion] nuclear power station on Anglesey.

Ford also said it will close between 160 to 180 of its 400 U.K. franchised car retail locales over the next five years in order to build a “stronger and more sustainably profitable Ford sales and servicing network for the future in the U.K.”

Ironically, unemployment in Wales is very low – having fallen to a record low of 2.9% during the October-to-December quarter last year, versus a figure of 3.8% for the U.K as a whole.

Wales had recorded a 3.8% jobless rate for the July-to-September quarter.

Welsh Secretary Simon Hart called the jobs data a "thoroughly strong set of statistics" for Wales.

"Thousands of people have found work over the previous quarter and unemployment in Wales is below the U.K. average," he said. "This is testament to the hard work both governments are contributing to stimulating our economy."