Europe

Home page

Europe

Belgium Ford factory workers protest plant closure

25 October 2012 22:53 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Angry workers at Ford Company’s Belgium plant have staged a rally in protest to the American carmaker’s plan to close the plant, setting a vehicle on fire, APA reports quoting Press TV.

The angry workers blocked the entrance to the Ford assembly plant and set a vehicle on fire near the venue of their gathering in the town of Genk.

The American automaker announced on Wednesday that its factory in Genk in the northeast Flemish region of Limbourg, near the Dutch border, would be shuttered and its 4,300 workers will be laid off.

The closure will also affect another 5,000 employees working as sub-contractors in the region.

"We feel betrayed, we had a contract, a work contract till 2020 and now everything’s over," one of the plant employees said.

Executives at Ford say declining car sales and the company’s production overcapacity are the main reasons for the decision.

In a statement issued in Frankfurt, Ford Europe said that the plan will "help to address manufacturing overcapacity stemming from a more-than-20-percent drop in total industry vehicle demand in Western Europe since 2007."

Ford said the assembly of its Mondeo, S-Max, and Galaxy models would be transferred from Genk to Valencia in Spain.