As of today, Ford factories across Australia are officially closing for business. The decision was finalised three years ago by at the time president and chief executive, Bob Graziano. The decision was based on the United States head office refusal to import Australian-made Ford Falcons as police cars, killing off Ford‘s Australian exporting business and making it an unsupportable circumstance to continue manufacturing the cars.
Today, the remaining 400 workers at the Ford factory in Broadmeadows in Melbourne will be apart of rolling out the last Australian-made Ford Falcon across the assembly line before leaving the company permanently, with 200 workers based in Ford‘s historical Australian home, Geelong, doing the same. Eight out of the 600 now unemployed workers however will have the opportunity to win an identical blue Falcon XR6 sedan in a staff raffle while the final Ford Falcon will be kept as a museum piece, alongside the last Territory SUV and last Falcon ute.
“We got our house because of Ford. I married – at Ford, I met my wife. My children worked at Ford,”stated Andreas Zarogiannis, an employee who has worked at Ford for over 30 years. “How can I get that and not be proud of a company? I am still proud of that.”
More than 3.8 million Ford Falcons have been made in Australia over 56 years with its manufacturing first beginning in 1925 in Geelong.
“Now 600 people have to leave. Some people, they are never going to find a secure job like Ford,” Zarogiannis added. “Unfortunately things change in Australia and some people suffer, for sure a lot of people are going to suffer.”
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