Oakville, Ontario — On Monday Ford Canada announced that 450 employees from its Oakville, Ont. assembly plant will be laid off as the automaker discontinues two popular models.
Unifor Local 707, which represents the Oakville Ford plant workers, confirmed that effective Feb. 3, 2020, the company will lay off 450 of its lowest seniority members indefinitely as a direct result of the automaker’s plans to discontinue the Ford Flex and Lincoln MKT models. Both models will stop production in late-November.
The layoffs cut nearly 11 percent of the Oakville assembly plant’s 4,200 workers and 5.6 percent of Ford’s 8,000 Canadian employees. The fate of the Ford Flex has been in question for quite some time—in late 2016, officials at Unifor said that Ford would discontinue the Flex in 2020.
According to Ford, the Flex has accumulated something of a cult following since its 2008 debut. Ford sold about 27,000 Flex models each year, accumulating to more than 296,000 total units sold. The automaker, however, has said the sales of the vehicle never met expectations.
The layoff announcement follows a similar announcement from this past July when the Oakville plant announced it would be laying off 200 employees come September to better match vehicle supply with customer demand.
The remaining Oakville plant employees will continue to produce the Ford Edge and Lincoln Nautilus, though the union plans to fight to diminish the impact of Ford’s decision.
“The Local leadership will continue to make every effort to lessen the impact of this decision,” said Dave Thomas, president of Unifor Local 707 in a press release. “It’s never a good time for lay-off notifications but when it happens around the holiday season it makes it that much more troubling.”
