A recent announcement by the Ford motor company has revealed that it is reducing the amount of Ford transits van produced from 75,000 to 35,000 with production in its Swaythling plant moving down to a four day week.

Ford Transit

The Ford Transit was extremely popular with many small businesses and tradesmen due to its size reliability and cheap van insurance costs. Yet with an increasingly competitive market, Ford have deemed it necessary to cut down production of the Ford Transit stating that it was a response to "softening market conditions affecting the industry".

Ford spokesman Brian Bennett said "In response to softening market conditions affecting the industry, Ford is further reducing production volumes at some of its European plants during the remainder of 2008.

"Since August, this softening in the market has resulted in a reduction in the daily volumes of Ford Transits produced in the Southampton plant. The continued downturn in the market also required 17 days of production to be taken out through to the end of the year (the first on 1 October). “

"Employees will continue to be paid on these down days, in line with their contracted conditions of employment. Employee representatives and union officials at Southampton are being kept fully informed. “

The head of the Unite Union which represents workers at the Ford plant expressed his fears that these new measures by Ford could lead to the long term closure of the plant in the near future. Yet he also continued to say that he was not surprised by the move as many companies seemed to be taking stock in the current economical climate.

He said: "The company will implement a reduction in volume from 75,000 transit vans a year to 35,000 a year. That's the company's plan, which we are completely opposed to.

"The staff have done everything that's been asked of them. We think there is an option to negotiate an agreement that delivers productivity improvements and long-term job security."

Spealist Ford Transit vans

Ford has revealed its long term plans for the plant, revealing that they are planning to continue making the Transit panel van at the plant till 2011, after which Ford want to use the plant to make a specialist version of the model called the “chassis cab version”.

Despite threats of protest on Southampton’s streets by the unions this has not stopped ford cutting down production, and now with today’s announcement of further reductions in production, the future of the Swaythling plant is looking even more unstable.

The new cuts are going to reduce production down to 250 vans a day according to sources at the Southampton daily echo, bosses where originally reviewing production monthly but they are now looking at it weekly.

He said: “There is a lot of uncertainty in the plant and we are being told that these cuts are due to shrinking orders across Europe.

“Workers are worried that if volumes get too low Turkey will swallow the whole operation and we will lose the plant that way. “

The future is by no means certain at the Swaythling plant with production looking to be cut, many fear that they may lose their job or worse still the factory closed and production moved elsewhere.