The redundancies announced at Dagenham's Ford plant have heightened fears that Britain's labour laws provide less protection for workers and make them easier to be sacked than their counterparts in the European Union. The unions believe that British car workers are cheaper to sack than those in Europe. So, faced with over-production in the car market and a need to cut back on vehicles, the unions insist, manufacturers will save money by choosing to sacrifice British jobs rather than those of continental car workers. There are few detailed studies comparing the cost to multinational firms of sacking British workers in relation to the cost of making their European counterparts redundant.
Labour laws keep changing and the statutory benefits companies pay vary accordingly.
The company currently employs about 26,000 workers in the UK, including 8,000 at Dagenham. The company has proposed an enhanced redundancy package to try to achieve the cut-back through volunteers and will offer some employees at Dagenham the chance to transfer to other factories. A Ford spokesman has denied that British workers could be dispensed with more cheaply. Anyway, he said, that cost was not the crucial issue. Long term investment strategies were more decisive.