Ford`s Flat Rock plant cuts one shift

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The American manufacturer Ford announced in February that the Flat Rock plant, Michigan, jointly owned by Mazda Motor Corp., would consolidate all Ford Mustang and Mazda6 production on a single shift and excess employees would be sent home. This was necessary because the plant wasn't running efficiently.

Now, the automaker says that those 900 workers would stay with the company, as they have been reassigned.

Although the new single shift is 35 percent more efficient than the previous assembly line, it turned out that requires more workers than originally anticipated. There will now be no workers that will be permanently laid off.

"None went to indefinite layoff," Evans said, but some workers being put in temporary lay-off status until their new jobs become available.

Some of the workers will be reassigned to build the new 2012 Focus starting later this year at the Wayne assembly plant in Michigan, while the Chicago assembly plant is adding a second shift of 1,200 in the third quarter to make the new Ford Explorer.

Flat Rock now has about 1,750 workers.

The plant had a lot of downtime last year as Mustang sales fell 27 percent and Mazda6 sales were off 34 percent. Both the Mustang and Mazda6 are up less than 1 percent for the first half of the year, but in June sales of the Mustang have increased 18.5% to 40,035 while sales of the Mazda 6 have increased 3.8% to 18,325.