More and more bad news has hit the city of Windsor in Ontario. Wednesday was the last day for General Motors employees at the transmission plant in the city and further bad automotive news came on light on Thursday. Another automaker in Windsor, Ford Motor Co., announced Thursday that job layoffs will follow.

After General Motors closed its plant and 500 people lost their jobs on Wednesday, more troubling news has been spreading in Windsor that more 388 jobs at Ford will be lost. Ford Motor Co. is going to eliminate one of two shifts at its Windsor Engine plant as of November 1st, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union confirmed on Thursday.

Dan Cassady, president of CAW Local 200 said that they had known that the layoff was coming but they did not know the number of jobs to be lost. "So once the company had all those numbers we had to get them out to our members right away and let people know what was going on," Cassady said. The Ford plant will produce 840 engines a day in comparison with 2,200 at present.

101 of those employees who will not lose their job will be added to a new second shift at Ford's Essex Engine plant, which produces a new 5.0-litre engine for the new Ford Mustang. The engine plant producing the 5.4- and 6.2-litre Triton engines for F-150 series pickup trucks will be closed in 2014.

In the past few years, thousands of people in Windsor have lost their jobs in the automotive industry.

Jana Paskova

Photo: ISIFA