The American car manufacturer Ford will cut 3,200 jobs in Germany, mainly in the administrative and design fields, a spokesman for the German union IG Metall told AFP on Monday. This announcement comes as fears of relocation of automotive industries are mounting in Europe, since Washington introduced large subsidies for electric vehicles built in the United States, in its plan called IRA (Inflation Reduction Act). These job cuts were revealed to the press after a general meeting of employees on Monday. They will be done “mainly on the Cologne site” (west), even if “all the sites in Germany” are threatened, detailed the spokesperson for IG Metall. “We are extremely concerned about the future of the German development divisions and overall the future of Ford’s German sites,” the union said in a later statement. The job cuts should concern the “product development” department of the Cologne site, where “2,500 of the 3,800 employees should leave the company”, detailed IG Metall. A total of 15,000 people work at the Cologne site.
