In just a few months, Valencia has gone from the euphoria of being the winner of the Volkswagen gigafactory to the ever-recurring fear about the future of Ford in Almussafes. In the automotive sector, there is now a bittersweet feeling.
The electric car has not yet arrived, and neither have the plans of the big companies. Ford, without wanting to be very concise, does acknowledge that it will be "making decisions" as the market and its customers make the transition to electric vehicles. Meanwhile, there is an ERO in the works for a staff surplus which seems to be the key to the next process. Because, in the new technological paradigm, experts already assume that employment will be clearly affected.
"The perfect storm is brewing: semiconductor shortages, volatile steel prices, falling demand, broken supply chains and now inflationary pressures... are taking their toll," enumerates Elies Seguí, director of the chair of Valencian Economy at the UPV. The blank time of the pandemic has also penalized them, maintains Juanjo Picazo, general secretary of CCOO-PV Indústria. "It is necessary to look for an explanation for the closures, to understand what has happened in the automotive sector. And here we find a year and a half or two years in which the industry and new projects have been paralyzed and this delay has consequences for the usual cycle of the automotive industry", argues Picazo, who these weeks holds intermittent meetings with the management of Thyssenkrupp Galmed, the latest company to announce a shutdown in the industry.
Before it was Lear and SAAS, and also the Rhenus Automotive group in Almussafes, which announced an ERO for, “exclusively”, the company clarifies, the center in charge of logistics supply. The company, which also operates in Esparreguera and Pedrola (Zaragossa), confirms that "it is not closing its doors" in Almussafes and that it will continue to provide its services at the assembly plant, where it assembles vehicle components.
On Thursday, after threatening to go on strike, the works committee reached an agreement and announced that they had managed to get the 118 workers "good, although not as expected" compensation, according to the president of the works committee, Toni Olaya. The committee directly accused Ford of the situation, as it alleges that the loss of its jobs takes place for the benefit of the "cheap" labor that the multinational has sought in special employment centers. And they call it "cancer" for the Almussafes industrial park.
The dependence of the Valencian industry on Ford is obvious. "100%", says Enrique Careaga, CEO of Industrias Alegre. The manager lists the decrease in volumes, the salary increases - "which cannot be reflected in the price of the parts" -, the investments made to meet the maximum demands and the end of the production of the Transit model in Almussafes for the year 2024 as reasons for this to be a "tremendously complicated" time.
He believes that this situation means that "only companies with a financial lung or diversified with business volume without dependence on Ford will be able to endure this period that will last several years".
That is why the Generalitat Valenciana seeks to balance the days of glory with warnings that already seem inevitable and that indicate that something is changing. In the Valencian Government, they assume in fact that the auxiliary industry of the automobile is "the one that will suffer the most", that is why they want to help it to be "more competitive and prepare it to be able to provide service and product in the new stage, the of the new wave of the automotive industry", explains the regional secretary of Industry, Commerce and Consumption, Felipe Javier Carrasco.
The politician believes that the effort should be put into training, "giving competitive tools to the automotive auxiliary industry, which is really the one that has more than 20,000 jobs and the one that keeps the Valencian Community going being a manufacturing leader in the automotive industry”, he adds.
The Administration is concerned about the ups and downs of the industry, but all they have to do is wait. President Carlos Mazón wanted to be cautious recently when, on the matter of Ford, he said that he hoped that his plans would become concrete "as soon as possible". The company is delaying the allocation of electricians in Valencia in a changing international context and it has consequences. The manager of the AVIA automotive and mobility cluster, Jackie Sánchez-Molero, explains that they continue to pay attention to the official information with "the hope that there will be new electric models that will revitalize the sector. We are aware that this delay in communications brings uncertainty to the sector".
