Hmmm some interesting replies.
Shame to see the sot'on plant go as we used to do a lot of business with them in the good old days of transit production at Swansea ford plant.
Yes,turkey have been involved with transit production for many years,their quality is dismal compared to the Southampton ones but yes it was all a giant cover up to get the production moved out to turkey.
We made the brake discs for the front wheel drive transit and the Turks constantly sent the discs back claiming they were "out of spec".
Bear in mind we made these parts to a spec within a 10 microns tolerance of spec which is incredibly tight.
I was asked to make the "perfect" set of brake discs to send out,everything to zero spec,which we did,no stone left unturned.
The Turks rejected them for a 0.02 micron radius out of spec,we didn't even have the equipment to measure this and we knew for certain the Turks didn't.
We lost the contract for the latest shape transit due to these tolerance and other issues,none of any real significance.
The **** they then had to send to us for assembly was so bad we actually ran out of room in the area to put the scrap,appalling.
theres only actually about 200 "books in" ford employees at Southampton plant,so the others won't be getting much of a payout plus if you do 25 years for a firm should you not get anything?
ford are a great company to work for,good pay/benefits etc but they love to run on fear,the less you know about the politics,the better.the unions will always have a big say in ford,but when you work there not a day goes by without management coming up with yet another way of trying to spoil any sort of good thing that's going on ,even if it was in their favour,it's a constant game of cat and mouse and it grinds a lot of people down.
Feel how you want about their payout or whatever guys,it's yet another kick in the balls for British industry.