Ford North America to temporarily stop production due to COVID-19

Ford North America, as well as other brands in the country, are temporarily shutting down their production of vehicles in the interest of preventing the spread of the Coronavirus. The Blue Oval sates that “Production at Ford’s US, Canadian and Mexican manufacturing facilities will be halted after Thursday evening’s shifts through March 30 to thoroughly clean and sanitize the company’s plants.” During this showdown, workers from US factories will receive unemployment insurance as well as pay from their employers. Together these payments will nearly add up to their full pay. These are the standards for workers in the event that a factory shutdown occurs.

The move to halt production was called upon by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. The union also pushed for other big car companies to shut down as well. Other car companies such as General Motors and the Fiat Chrysler auto group. The push for the shutdown was made in order to safeguard the works as well as their families and communities from the spread of the Coronavirus.

While these companies don’t want to completely shut down their facilities they have come to the agreement that they will do rotating partial shutdowns. This means that the American automakers have all agreed to deep clean their facilities and equipment when a new batch of workers come in for duty. The companies have also extended the downtime between shifts in order to give way to the cleaning process.

The Philippine branch of the Blue Oval will not be affected as much due to the halts in production. Ford Philippines only sources a few models in its lineup from the United States. The majority of the vehicles that the company does sell here, however, are sourced from our ASEAN neighbors, which doesn't affect the chain of supply into the country.