Ford to cut up to 30,000 jobs, idle 14 plants

Reacting to news of the job cuts, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said: “Anytime someone loses a job we’re concerned about it, we’re concerned about the community.”

However, McClellan said overall the economy “is going strong.”

Alan Hallman, mayor of Hapeville, Ga., where the Atlanta Assembly Plant is located, called the news “a setback for the state.”

The plant, which makes the Taurus, has about 2,000 employees. Hallman said it accounts for 9 percent of the small city’s budget.

“We’ve got hundreds of man-hours and thousands of dollars invested on various plans to keep them here. The fact that they’ve elected to idle the plant is very disappointing,” he said.

In Wixom, 18-year worker James Crawford said he is too young to retire and might not have enough seniority to get hired at another plant.

“This really hits me hard,” said the 48-year-old car painter, who listened to the announcement on the radio in a white Ford Probe parked across the street from the plant. “It looks like I’m starting over.”

In addition to the cuts in hourly jobs, Ford said it was reducing the company’s officer ranks by 12 percent by the end of the first quarter. The company previously said it was cutting the equivalent of 4,000 salaried positions by the end of the quarter.

Ford said in its earnings statement earlier Monday that it reduced employment in 2005 by 10,000 people due to layoffs, buyouts and attrition. Ford has around 300,000 employees worldwide.

The No. 2 U.S. automaker after General Motors Corp. has been hurt by falling sales of its profitable sport utility vehicles, growing health care and materials costs and labor contracts that have limited its ability to close plants and cut jobs. The UAW will have to agree to some portions of the restructuring plan, dubbed the “Way Forward” by Ford officials.

“The announced plant closings and future announcements are the subject of ongoing discussions with Ford,” Gettelfinger and Bantom said. “Certainly, today’s announcement will only make the 2007 negotiations all the more difficult and all the more important.”

Ford will almost certainly try to eliminate the unparalleled job protection that lets hourly workers continue to collect wages and benefits even when there is no longer any work for them, predicted Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University.

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“The auto industry and the UAW agreed to benefits and protections in good times which they cannot live up to in hard times, and I think both parties know it,” Chaison said.

Ford also has seen its U.S. market share slide as a result of increasing competition from foreign rivals. The company suffered its tenth straight year of market share losses in the United States in 2005, and for the first time in 19 years, Ford lost its crown as America’s best-selling brand to GM’s Chevrolet. Ford sold around 2.9 million vehicles for a market share of 17.4 percent in 2005, down from 18.3 percent the year before and 24 percent in 1990.

The restructuring is Ford’s second in four years. Under the first plan, Ford closed five plants and cut 35,000 jobs, but its North American operations failed to turn around.

Ford used just 79 percent of its North American plant capacity in 2005, down from 86 percent in 2004, according to preliminary numbers released last week by Harbour Consulting Inc., a firm that measures plant productivity. By contrast, rival Toyota Motor Corp. was operating at full capacity.

States have been scrambling to offer tax credits and other incentives to keep Ford from closing their facilities ever since the automaker said last fall that it was developing a restructuring plan.

Earlier this month, Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt and other state officials flew to Ford’s headquarters for a one-hour meeting with Ford executives. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm outlined a package of incentives to Ford last week but said she wasn’t given any assurance that Michigan plants would be spared.

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