White Collar, Pink Slip: There's Pain Coming to Ford's Workforce

Streamlining rarely comes without a reduction in personnel, and it appears Ford’s $11 billion restructuring plan will indeed bring about a loss of employees in North America. While the automaker previously hinted at steep job losses in its troubled European operation, a recent report shows employees need to be worried on several continents.

According to the Detroit Free Press, Ford’s plan will leave many unemployed white-collar, salaried workers in its wake.

Some 85,000 of Ford’s 201,000 worldwide employees reside in the United States. The number of salaried employees totalls 70,000 on a global scale.

At this point, the automaker doesn’t know exactly how many positions stand to be cut, though salaried workers were told Thursday of the basics of the streamlining plan. The ultimate goal is for Ford to become a leaner, less top-heavy operation, with cuts not targeted at any one specific area.

“We need to dig into the process deeper before we know the absolutes,” said Mark Truby, Ford’s vice president of global communications at Ford, in an interview with the Free Press. “What we’ve kicked off is a redesign of our global salaried workforce — in North America, Europe, Asia, South America. … ”

Kiersten Robinson, Ford’s group vice president and chief human resources officer, reiterated the objective of CEO Jim Hackett’s plan.

“You’ve heard (CEO) Jim Hackett talk about fitness and how we need to be more responsive, innovative, agile. Given that, it’s really important when you consider how we modernize the workforce, skills and capabilities we need,” she said. “Yesterday we shared with our global employees that we’re in the early stages of reorganizing the salaried workforce. This is designed to help us become more fit as a business.”

Ford’s near-term product plans are well known at this point, and it doesn’t look like any hourly workers need to be concerned in the United States. Bloomberg reports that Morgan Stanley estimates the cuts to number around 20,000.

Pushing salaried employees out the door could prove a boon to the company’s stock, which has all the lift of a brick tossed off the roof of the Glass House. Product and visionary tech announcements haven’t done the trick. Meanwhile, a number of factors have all put downward pressure on the automaker’s finances and, correspondingly, its stock.

Investors and analysts all want to see a share value course change, which is what Hackett’s streamlining plan hopes to accomplish. Otherwise, former CEO Mark Fields’ tenure serves as a lesson. After coming under fire recently for failing to turn around the company’s plunging stock price, Hackett told an interviewer that everything that could be done to right the financial ship is being done.

“We are not in a crisis,” Hackett said last month. “The company’s in great shape.”

[Image: Ford Motor Company]