MPs yesterday used a parliamentary debate to highlight the role of Fords in the plight of workers at the former Visteon factory on Fabian Way, Swansea, who, together with Visteon workers in Essex and Northern Ireland, have lost up to practically half their pensions as a result of Fords hiving off its factories into Visteon UK.
Describing the way the workers were told to transfer their pensions from Ford to Visteon as a complete rip-off, Nia Griffith said the hiving off of Visteon UK from Ford seemed to be all about maximising profit for Ford, at the expense of the workers – workers who had given years of loyal service and possibly chosen to work in Fords because of its solid reputation.
She asked “Does anyone now seriously believed that Ford bosses had not seen the hiving off of Visteon as a way to get rid of pension responsibilities and drive down costs? Then as purchaser of 90% of Visteon UK’s output, Ford could demand whatever prices it wanted, and then it started secretly dealing with other factories, so it would be able to do without Visteon altogether. Doesn’t it seem likely that this was the plan from the beginning, from back before 2000?”