Ford motor works in Leningrad region to shift to 5-day workweek

VSEVOLOZHSK (Leningrad region), January 11 (Itar-Tass) -- The Ford
motor works in the Leningrad region will return to a 5-day workweek on
Monday. The Ford Vsevolozhsk top management believes that the foresaid
changes in the production schedule will consolidate the company's position
on the Russian car market.
The shop producing car bodies will get back to the 5-workday week on
January 11, Ford Russia PR Director Yekaterina Kulinenko told Itar-Tass.
The four-day workweek was earlier planned to continue at the motor works
until February 5, 2010.
The company links the prospects for development of the Russian car
market with the state-funded measures to support the domestic car making
industry. The Ford top management hopes to launch a program for the
disposal of used cars next year that will certainly have the positive
influence on the car demand in Russia.
The motor works has been operating in two shifts since September 22.
The company's top managers explained the foresaid changes in the working
schedule by the adaptation of the production capacities to the falling
demand on the Russian car market and by the intentions to avoid layoffs at
the motor works in Vsevolozhsk.
The Ford Vsevolozhsk motor works was commissioned in the Leningrad
region in 2002 and became the first foreign motor works in Russia that the
world motor giant Ford possessed fully.
The motor works is specialized in the production of Ford Focus cars,
and Ford Mondeo cars became a new model produced at the motor works in
March 2009. The maximum annual output of the motor works makes 125,000
cars. Over 2.4 thousand employees work at the motor works.
-0-baz