The Ford plant closure is sad loss of manufacturing know how
Geoffrey Brooks, Pro-Vice Chancellor (Future Manufacturing), Swinburne University of Technology The closure of Ford’s casting plant in Geelong does make you wonder how losing the ability to make our own engines can be a step forward. Australia should take stock and contemplate what kind of society we are becoming. Critics of the decision to allow the car industry to leave would argue that governments should subsidise their local car manufacturing industries because of the benefits the industry brings in terms of employment and raising the general technological level of that country. In An Economy is not a Society, Dennis Glover argues that we are making a tremendous social and economic mistake in allowing such industries to close in the name of global competition. Glover outlines how the support for manufacturing in the post second world war era provided a base for many ordinary people to lead better lives, leading to many positive social and economic outcomes. He argues that the type of economy we have developed since the 1980s favours a few over the many. Certainly, the current government has shown more enthusiasm for making submarines than it did for car manufacturing, how does that extraordinary $50 billion dollar investment stack up, in terms of jobs and flow on effects? With the closing of the automotive industry, our knowledge of metals casting will clearly dive. Those employed at Ford and similar employees at Toyota and Holden don’t have equivalent jobs to take their deep knowledge to. The opportunities in the metals industry in this country are thin on the ground. The large casting plants are now in Asia, though the high technology end still prospers in part of Western and Northern Europe. The Chinese are currently known more for the low value end of metal castings but they are likely to […]