There’s something almost poetic about watching a $7.8 billion promise dissolve into what Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers calls “the biggest economic recruitment waste in state history”. Last December, Ford and SK Innovation decided their 2022 joint venture, BlueOval SK, wasn’t working out. Like any reasonable corporate breakup, they shuttered a factory, fired everyone, and slapped a fresh coat of paint on the failure.
The Kentucky facilities tell two different stories under the same roof. Ford kept one plant, closed it entirely, laid off all workers, and now plans to retrofit it for battery production under a shiny new entity called Ford Energy. This time for energy storage solutions, not electric vehicles. The second plant? Currently seeking buyers, like a house nobody wants in a neighborhood that’s seen better days.
Governor Andy Beshear, ever the optimist, insists this is merely a delay, not a disaster. “It’ll just take a little bit longer to get there”, he said, apparently unmoved by the fact that “getting there” now involves hundreds of unemployed workers wondering how they’ll pay rent after February 14.
Valentine’s Day will hit different for Brittany Disprisco and her wife, both BlueOval employees facing termination while raising two children. “We’re trying to figure out how to keep a roof over our heads” she said, framing the situation with an honesty that corporate press releases carefully avoid.
Scott Musgrove won’t be listing BlueOval on his resume. “It was a waste of time and I wish I never applied there, knowing what I know now and how they treated basically everybody, especially the pro-union people”, he said. The pay was decent, according to Sandie Yarborough, which makes finding comparable work even harder. Most former employees are now attempting career pivots that didn’t factor into their life plans two years ago.
Ford’s pivot from BlueOval SK to Ford Energy sounds strategic on paper. In practice, it resembles a shipwreck survivor declaring they’re now in the luxury cruise business. The batteries will still get made, eventually, just not by the same people, in the same configuration, for the same purpose initially promised. Progress, apparently, requires starting from scratch after burning through billions and leaving workers to figure out their next move.
