Background papers

FORD told Visteon workers they would have “lifetime protection” of their pay and conditions if they agreed to leave the carmaker and join the components group, company documents seen by The Sunday Times show.

Nearly 600 Visteon workers at plants in Belfast, Basildon in Essex and Enfield, north London, lost their jobs last week after Visteon UK was put into administration.

They are likely to lose part of their pensions – some have nearly 40 years of service, with forecast pensions of more than £30,000 a year – as a result of the collapse. The Visteon UK pension scheme is understood to have a deficit of about £150m, and union leaders have urged Ford, which spun Visteon out of its main operations nine years ago, to step in.

Ford said it was under no “legal or moral” obligation to help, saying it had hired 560 Visteon staff back since the split. KPMG, appointed administrator last Tuesday, said Ford “assured” it this was the case.

Documents given to staff at the time of the split told them they would not lose out. To the question, “How long are our pay and conditions guaranteed?”, the company answered: “For the duration of your employment with Visteon UK, your terms and conditions . . . will mirror Ford conditions. This means lifetime protection while an employee of Visteon UK of all your contractual conditions of employment.”

Other internal documents seen by The Sunday Times suggest Visteon UK’s management was preparing for the closure of the Belfast plant as early as January 2007.

A report entitled Project Protea discusses the development of “duplicate sources for all the Belfast product lines by the end of 2007”.

Managers involved aimed to “minimise information leaks by creating isolated project teams”.

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