4,200 workers just extra at Ford
Company, UAW meet as buyout efforts ramp up
BY SARAH A. WEBSTER
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
About 4,200 autoworkers still must go at Ford Motor Co.
That's the number of excess hourly workers that the Dearborn-based automaker has in North America, the company told union officials during private Ford-UAW meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday. The news was first reported Wednesday on freep.com.
Ford Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally and other top Ford executives, such as Joe Hinrichs, group vice president for manufacturing and labor affairs, and Jim Farley, group vice president of marketing and communications, addressed hundreds of union workers during the sessions.
While Ford officials came short of calling the 4,200 number a job-reduction target, several people who attended the meeting, and who did not want to be identified, said the company made it clear that it would like to reduce the number of workers by that number or more under its latest round of buyouts.
Ford has reduced its hourly workforce by nearly 40% since 2005. That left Ford with about 61,000 hourly workers in the United States, Canada and Mexico at the end of June. (That works out to 1 salary worker for ever 3 hourly workers).
The Dearborn automaker is offering 10 buyout packages to workers at select factories in Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky, but it has not divulged publicly how many hourly workers it aims to shed.
Ford officials had no comment on the figure provided to the union.
It is unclear whether Ford, which has lost $8.6 billion through the first half of the year, will begin the process of permanently laying off unneeded workers under the terms of its labor contract if it does not meet its target.
But with its U.S. sales down 15.6% and economic malaise spreading from the United States to foreign markets, Ford is ramping up its efforts to slim down its workforce.
The automaker involuntarily laid off an unknown number of salaried workers in July and August after an effort to get workers to leave with buyouts came up short. ( However keep in mind, the old boys club is alive and well. A percentage of salaried workers after a buyout or retirement package, returned to work as contract workers. Deals that were cut months before their jobs were "eliminated".) Ford refused to say how many workers have left so far, but the automaker is expected to formally divulge the number when it reports its third-quarter financial results in October. (How many returned to their old position as contract workers?)
Ford had attempted to shed 8,000 hourly jobs through voluntary buyouts earlier this year, too. However, just 3,700 workers voluntarily left the company during the first half of the year, leaving Ford about 4,300 workers short of its hourly reduction objective and with 60,600 workers still on its payroll in North America.
Last week, the automaker launched a Web site, www.yourjobconnection.org, in an effort to get workers to consider taking one of the buyout packages.
Ford has "more people than jobs," Hinrichs, the manufacturing and labor affairs chief, says in a video on the site. "We're expecting things to stay difficult for the next few years."
Bob King, UAW vice president and director of the union's Ford department, who joins Hinrichs in the video, adds: "I urge you to carefully consider these programs."
On Wednesday, Ford told its workers in Canada that it intends to cut 500 jobs at its Oakville, Ontario, factory, where it is encouraging eligible workers to take early retirement offers.
It remains unclear whether Ford is finished slimming down its salaried workforce in the tough economic climate.
When the Free Press asked Mulally on Monday whether the company was finished with involuntarily layoffs, he said the automaker would continue to match its costs to market demands.
"We're going to keep looking at everything," Ford spokeswoman Karen Hampton later said. She added that "there is not a current plan" to further reduce the number of salaried workers.
Contact SARAH A. WEBSTER at 313-222-5394 or swebster@freepress.com.
