The writing had been on the wall for years, but somehow it hasn’t made this week’s closing of Ford of Canada’s St. Thomas assembly plant after almost half a century any easier to take.
“I’ve elected to retire . . . I don’t want to be part of another plant closure,” plant manager Gareth Ford told reporters during a briefing on the closure last week.
Like many of the plant’s remaining 1,200 workers, the plant manager had been a long-time employee, having started in the factory’s body shop in 1989.
On Monday, the last in a long line of Ford Crown Victorias will pass through that shop.
At the end of the shift, the workers in that department will put down their tools, clean up their work stations and walk out the factory’s main doors for the last time.
On Tuesday, the paint shop crew follow suit.
The company expects the final sedan to roll out of the 2.6-million-square-foot factory on Thursday.
It’s the final chapter in a 44-year history that saw the St. Thomas plant produce some of the continent’s most popular cars, starting with the Ford Pinto and Maverick.
Since 1984, the factory has assembled the automaker’s big rear-wheel-drive cars, mainstays of police and taxi fleets for much of the last generation.
The workers have officially known since 2009 that the plant would close, but they had anticipated it for much longer.
“Anybody who started working here would be told, ’Hey, kid, don’t get used to this, because it’s going to close one day,’ ” said Dennis McGee, president of Local 1520 of the Canadian Auto Workers union, which represents the hourly crew at St. Thomas.
McGee, who started assembling Ford Fairmonts and Mercury Zephyrs in 1978, says the carmaker stopped investing in upgrades years ago.
Since 2000, sales of Ford’s full-size sedans, which include the Lincoln Town Car, have fallen steadily. The basic design dates to the late 1970s and had not kept up with 21-century fuel efficiency standards and more modern competition.
A decade ago, there were about 3,600 hourly employees at the factory. When the plant went to a single shift in 2007, only 1,200 were left with regular paycheques.
To help ease the final blow, the union and the automaker have worked out compensation packages that allow for early retirements and a limited number of transfers to other Ford factories.
The roughly 800 remaining employees who need to find new work get a severance package as well as three years of job-search and retraining assistance through an action centre set up by the CAW.
Brian Cooper, a counsellor with the Salvation Army’s correctional and justice services in downtown St. Thomas, notes that the real effects of the lost jobs won’t be felt until severance money and employment insurance benefits run out.
Cindy Moniz, program co-ordinator at Employment Services Elgin, says the local unemployment rate is currently 9.1 per cent — “which makes us the highest in the country.”
That figure includes London and Middlesex County, as well as Elgin. “The number is probably a bit higher in St. Thomas,” Moniz says.
She notes that many of the 3,500 people who lost their jobs when the local Sterling truck factory closed in 2009 are still looking for a regular income.
“A lot of people decided to go back to school for longer, two-year programs, and they’re only now getting into the job market,” says Moniz.
She adds that before the economic crisis, it would take a person about three months to find a job. Right now, “it’s about double that.”