Ford Motor Co. plans to offer buyout and early retirement packages to more than 75,000 of its employees, a United Auto Workers union official said today. . . Ford lost $1.4 billion during the first half of the year and is under pressure from Wall Street to make further cuts and roll out new cars and trucks more quickly.
In July, the company pledged to accelerate its "Way Forward" restructuring plan, which when introduced in January called for cutting up to 30,000 jobs and closing 14 facilities by 2012.
Ford has about 300,000 employees. Even if the 75,000 figure includes the previously announced 30,000 layoffs, we are still talking about a 15% work force reduction, in addition to previously announced cuts.
The brands Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin are all affiliated with Ford.
General Motors now has about 327,000 employees. Both GM and Ford employ far fewer people than they did at their peak employment. Some GM's employees went to Delphi, the automative parts making which GM spun off, which has about 182,500 employees. General Motors once employed about 800,000 and was the largest employer in the nation when I first started looking at these numbers. Now, the largest employers in the United States are Wal-Mart (1.8 million), McDonald's (447,000 million), UPS (407,000, which is about half the employment of the United States Postal Office), Sears Holding (355,000 also declining), and Home Depot (345,000).
You are far away in Colorado. It seems pretty bad here in Michigan. My husband is an excellent engineer. He may be "offered" a retirement which at 55 is not that great of an retirement. Certainly not the nice retirement he would have had at 65. But the worse part is that a career, a really fine career may be interrupted. If it is, it will have nothing to do with his ability or contribution to his field, but just a decision to remove him because of his age and years of service. My husband is an engineer not a salesman. His abilities are in research not self marketing. We, he will survive but it is a colossal waste of his abilities that he is even worried about needing to leave instead of working out the shake problem in your hybrid's chassis. I am angry about what it is doing to him.
ReplyDeleteI can truly relate to lay-offs in the automobile industry. I grew up in a "GM" town and was the daughter of a GM employee. The entire town was affected by the success or lack of success of GM. If you would like to learn more about my childhood experience as the daughter of a GM Employee, click here -
ReplyDeleteAn Editorial From a Daughter of a GM Employee