Ford India reaches severance package settlement with employee union

Ford India on Thursday announced that it has arrived at a settlement on the severance package with the employees union following its decision to shut its Tamil Nadu plant as part of a restructuring exercise. The company announced that it would revise the final severance settlement to an average equivalent of 140 days of gross wages per completed year of service from the ongoing offer of 130 days.

The company said that one additional one-time lump sum of ₹1.50 lakh will also be included in the final settlement. Thus, a cumulative severance package for each employee of Ford India would range from ₹34.50 lakh up to ₹86.50 lakh whereas the revised settlement would translate to an average of about 5.1 years or 62 months salary for each employee.

The formal revised settlement of severance has been planned to be executed before the end of this month and employees would soon be notified on the next steps towards completing the exit formalities. Further, the company said that it will continue paying wages to employees until September 30 to support the exit formalities.

Ford India, in its statement, also said that it remains grateful to the employee union, the Tamil Nadu government and labour officials for their support. In September last year, the company had announced the shutting down of its operations here and had said that it would sell only imported vehicles in the Indian market.

The automaker has already stopped producing vehicles like EcoSport, Figo and Aspire for the Indian market. In July this year, the company rolled out its last production car from the assembly lines at the Maraimalai Nagar facility about 45 kms from Chennai.

The Ford India factory has been shut since August 31 and so far, there are no employees present at the unit now.

(with inputs from PTI)