Ford SA boss calls for cool heads in upcoming wage negotiations

01 Feb 2016 | Admin Author

The CEO of Ford Motor Company South Africa, Jeff Nemeth, says he expects that wage negotiations in the automotive sector will be tough.

Unions and employers meet later this year to negotiate another multi-year wage deal for both the manufacturing and component sector, which has in the past kept the industry stable.

However, with the violence marring the mining and agricultural sector, Nemeth has called for cool heads.

"I think its important that the unions, private industry and government work together to ensure that the wage negotiation season in the automotive industry, and that's both OEM's and the supply base, goes smoothly and goes without the sort of activities and violence that we saw in the negotiations that we saw in some of the other industries," he said.

Meanwhile, Ford Motor Company group vice president and president of Asia Pacific, Dave Schoch, says the global automotive industry is a growth industry, with projections for the global industry to reach 120 million units by 2020.

"That growth is going to be in Asia Pacific, particularly led by China, India and the Asean group and further in the decade it will be more in Africa. But, certainly we're in a global environment and its important for us as Ford, we had the one Ford plan, and that includes growing our business to about 8 million units a year by the end of the decade."