The Works Council and the closing of the IG Metall stamp factory in Ford Saarlouis in Germany

The Works Council and the closing of the IG Metall stamp factory in Ford Saarlouis in Germany


Last Thursday, the works council and trade union IG Metall invited the 3,750 remaining workers at the soon-to-be-closed Ford Saarlouis factory to a factory meeting with only one item on the agenda: a vote on the union’s so-called “social contract”. bureaucracy had been discussed.

Ford site in Saarlouis (Photo by Ford Media Center)

In addition to preventing the closure of the plant, the agreement has put restrictions on the closure of the plant, which has been an important source of employment in the southwestern region of Germany, near the border with France, for more than half a century. When Ford announced the closing of the plant, about two years ago, more than 6,000 workers worked at the Saarlouis plant and nearby supplier companies.

The agreement covers layoff packages, along with vague promises that some workers will remain employed in additional positions after the plant stops making cars.

Following last week’s vote, IG Metall officials celebrated, issuing a hypocritical statement, entitled “Saarlouis must live!—A whopping 93.28 percent approval.” Confederate officers, perhaps saying more than they intended, declared, “Our battles over the past months and years have paid off.”

There is little doubt that the suppression of any strike action to stop the plant closures has “paid” well for union and works council officials, such as Markus Thal. For the workers, their families and the entire region, however, it has been a disaster. Auto production will cease by the end of November 2025 and some 5,000 jobs will be lost. After December 2025, Ford “guarantees” only 1,000 jobs until 2032.

In other words, the result of the “fight” of the works council with IG Metall is that Ford Saarlouis is dead!

From the beginning, World Socialist Web Site and Ford’s Executive Committee, made up of rank and file workers, warned that this would be the result of a bidding war between IG Metall and the Confederation of General Workers (CGT) over where Ford would locate electric vehicle production. The union bureaucracy played the workers in Saarlouis and Almussafes, Spain, against each other and gave the management a huge wage deal, the details of which are kept secret to this day. The result is wage cuts, layoffs and plant closures.

The Ford Action Committee explained that jobs would not be protected by IG Metall and its works council but only through a rank-and-file revolt against the bureaucrats who stand on the side of the organization.

Warning of a strike by Ford workers in Saarlouis in January

After Ford announced that Saarlouis would close, the works council and IG Metall systematically laid off workers to make the closure possible. They restrained the workers, sought to keep them down and occasionally ordered them to the gate in toothless demonstrations in small numbers to allow the workers to fire up the steam.