The automotive industry is dying in America, due mostly to extreme mis-management in its upper core. Ford is anti-America and I’m going to back up these statements with facts. Ford has been systematically getting rid of its American employees and is replacing them with overseas workers. In April 2001 my husband was terminated from Ford Visteon. He was an automotive designer, working in advance design, at the top of his field and one of Ford’s better-paid employees. Including my husband, there were 1800 employees marched out the door that day. They were told it was a “business decision” made to cut expenses.
My husband was told that his job would be taken over by a fellow in India. He was also told that he couldn’t work anywhere in the automotive industry or be employed by any automotive venders down to the third tier for 4 years, long enough to make him obsolete. He had to sign a contract known as a “covenant not to compete” in the industry. All of Ford’s employees had to sign this document before being allowed to begin employment, so that if they were ever laid off or terminated by the company, they couldn’t work anywhere else. This effectively ended my husband’s 35-year career as an automotive designer. It ended the careers of all their terminated employees.
One fact I’d like to emphasize is that none of those employees terminated that day lost their jobs due to any fault of their own. Like my husband, most of them were older and more experienced, at the top of their field. These valuable men and women were Ford’s greatest assets! Most had degrees in engineering and some even had PhDs, but that didn’t matter to Ford. The fact that they had families to support didn’t matter to Ford and the fact that they lost their homes, cars, credit, virtually everything, because their careers were destroyed at the worst possible time in their lives, didn’t seem to bother the consciences of Ford’s upper management at all. In fact, they’ve repeated this “business decision” several times over since 2001, destroying thousands of careers and lives in the process.
The automotive industry was one of the things that made America strong during the 20th century. It’s my opinion that it was these “business decisions” made by Ford (and its sister company General Motors) that are directly responsible for their downfall and the death of the automotive industry here in the United States. My husband and I feel that Ford owes us, and all its terminated workers and their families, back pay from the date of termination (minus severance) until now, that it might restore us from the poverty in which Ford has forced us to live to the respectable status we once enjoyed. If they deny us this right, they deny themselves the right to be called Americans and truly deserve to go under, become impoverished themselves and be forever marked as traitors to this once-great country.
If you’d like to take a look at the future of America under extreme mis-management, plan a visit to Detroit, the once booming “motor city.” The only U.S. city with a greater population decrease and decayed condition than Detroit is New Orleans, for obvious reasons. There’s only one reason for Detroit’s decline: the death of the automotive industry.
References:
http://pub.bna.com/pbd/0612845.pdf
http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0504/21/B01-157356.htm
http://www.afa.net/ford102507.htm
http://money.cnn.com/2002/05/20/news/companies/ford/index.htm
http://www.afa.net/ford090507.htm
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/3/122003a.asp
http://info.detnews.com/redesign/forums/autostalk/lettersindex.cfm
http://www.cus.wayne.edu/content/presentations/Detroit_Crime%20Barometer_May_2007.pdf
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN2233659320070322
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080710/METRO/807100426
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