Ford Motor closing down plants in Virginia and Minnesota

US based automotive giants Ford Motors has said that they are going to close down their plants located in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Norfolk, Virginia. These plants would be closed down by 2008 and this step is a part of their massive restructuring plan to get back to profitability.

These two plants employees over 4,300 people. Ford’s restructuring plan named “Way Forward” has aims of closing down as many as 14 plants. This is including the plan to close down seven assembly plants, and slashing up to 30,000 blue-collar jobs.

The company made losses of $1.6 billion year and they are working hard on bringing back the profitable times. Local United Auto Workers union officials had already reported to media that Ford was going to close down these two plants.

These two plants are used by Ford to manufacture their products like Ranger compact pickup and Ford’s best-selling F-150 pickup.