The outlook for the Cologne plant is grim. The company, the IG Metall union, and the works council are currently organizing the elimination of around 4,000 of the plant’s approximately 11,500 jobs.
Five hundred of these cuts stem from a 2023 program under which 2,300 jobs are to be eliminated by the end of this year. A further 2,800 jobs will be cut by the end of 2027 under an agreement pushed through by IG Metall last summer. Nearly 750 jobs in the Cologne assembly plant will be lost due to the introduction of single-shift operations. Around 250 agency workers have already lost their jobs at Ford or one of its subsidiaries.
Most of the job cuts are to be implemented through severance packages. To this end, Ford and IG Metall have devised a three-phase mechanism of coercion. On November 28, the first three-month deadline began, during which workers are expected to decide on the “voluntary” surrender of their jobs. If too few workers accept the offer during this period, severance payments will be reduced by 25 percent. In the final stage, compulsory redundancies are threatened.
Anyone who resists this pressure—or simply hesitates too long—not only loses their job but may also receive a drastically reduced severance payment, or none at all. In this way, Ford, the works council and IG Metall are attempting to force through the destruction of jobs.
How many employees have so far signed severance agreements is being kept under wraps by both the company and the works council. It is said, however, that many prefer “an end with a bang to a bang without end.”
This approach places workers under enormous psychological pressure. For weeks, rumors have circulated throughout the plant about which departments would be closed, which sections sold off, and how many jobs would be cut in specific areas.
There is no end in sight to this psychological warfare. At a works meeting last week, employees were informed that further job cuts are planned for next year.
Only last month, the final Focus rolled off the production line at the Saarlouis plant, which is now being wound down. The same process—death by a thousand cuts—is now threatening the main plant in Cologne.
At the final works meetings of the year, held in recent weeks at the Cologne plant, management presented a brief overview of business developments and the so-called “social contract” negotiated with IG Metall and the works council. Concrete information was scarce, and neither the full negotiating documents nor precise timelines for the job cuts were disclosed.
This confirms what many employees report: IG Metall, the works council, and company management make decisions behind the backs of the workforce, destroying the future of thousands of families without consulting those affected. Workers are instead confronted with a fait accompli and pressured, mafia-style, with “offers they cannot refuse.”
At the beginning of the year, the Cologne workforce demonstrated its willingness to fight for jobs. More than 93 percent of IG Metall members voted in favor of a strike. Yet the union—having reluctantly organized the strike ballot under pressure from the membership—called off the strike after just 24 hours to enter into so-called negotiations with management, which ultimately produced the notorious social contract.
A resumption of the strike was explicitly ruled out. “Unfortunately, a viable future strategy cannot be forced through a strike,” shop stewards’ leader David Lüdtke claimed last summer.
The Cologne workforce now faces a fundamental decision. Will it follow the path taken in Saarlouis— the outcome of IG Metall’s and the works council’s policies under Chairman Benjamin Gruschka? Or will it organize independently of the company’s trade union enforcers?
On September 19, we wrote: “It can hardly be clearer: the jobs and the entire plant, which provide the livelihood for many thousands of people, can only be defended against the IG Metall apparatus and its works council.”
Workers who want to fight must organize independently in the Ford Action Committee. Ford is a global corporation employing 171,000 workers at plants on four continents. Links must be established with them—as well as with workers at Renault and other companies in the automotive, supplier, steel and related industries—across Germany, Europe and worldwide. Everyone is confronting the same challenges.
Only an international strategy and cooperation—based on the shared interests of working people around the world—can overcome division and protect workers from blackmail by management and the works council. Workers must reject the logic of the capitalist profit system, which union and works council officials defend at all costs.
We appeal to Ford workers: Send us a WhatsApp message at the following number: +491633378340 or register via the following form to begin the struggle to defend the plant.