(snip)"The approaching closings come as automakers, hurting from expensive health care, cheaper foreign competition and other problems, look to cut costs.
Almost half of Ford's hourly production workers -- 38,000 so far this year -- have accepted buyouts or early retirement offers from the nation's second-biggest automaker, which lost $7 billion in the first nine months of the year.
About a year ago, GM made public a plan to idle 12 plants over three years. GM spokesman Dan Flores said so far production has stopped at assembly plants in Oklahoma City and Lansing, Mich., and at a sheet metal stamping plant in Lansing.
For all these cities, "it's all a question of getting property back into a tax base," said Kelly Novak, a research manager for the Washington-based National Association of Development Organizations.
Many of the cities awaiting Ford closings mirror Lorain, a blue-collar town where the plant had been part of the industrial identity since 1958. Jobs there peaked at about 7,500 in the early 1970s. Ford stopped making Cougars and Thunderbirds there in 1997. During 2005, the work force dropped from about 1,700 to 750. Days before Christmas last year, Ford produced its last Econoline in Lorain.
Lorain jobs and workers, as well as Econoline van assembly, went to a Ford plant in nearby Avon Lake. The workers tend to live in the northeast Ohio region, not just the city, so there wasn't much population shift.
Loss of the plant meant $2.2 million less income tax revenue for a city that was already struggling with the loss of some 12,000 steel jobs in the past few decades. Lorain passed an emergency five-year, quarter-percent income tax increase to generate $2.4 million a year -- about $62 a year more on a $25,000 income -- but, said Mayor Craig Foltin, the city still cut about 100 jobs, including in the streets and parks departments.
One trucking company that depended on Ford went out of business, and electrical, carpentry and plumbing independent contractors feel the pinch, Foltin said."(snip)



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