By AP/KWMU
St. Louis, MO – Workers who face a job loss at the Hazelwood Ford plan will soon be offered $100,000 buyouts. Those who take the offer, though, will have to give up all of their benefits except pension.
The severance deal is one of five options Ford is presenting as it moves to close 14 plants by 2012.
As many as 30,000 workers will be affected by the closings. Production at the Ford plant in Hazelwood is scheduled to stop March 10.
Ford has about 14-hundred employees at its complex in Hazelwood. A contract between Ford and the United Auto Workers bars the company from laying workers off permanently without continuing most of their pay and benefits. That contract expires next year.