#TemporaryLayoffs

Ford Motor Co. will be temporarily laying off roughly 2,000 hourly employees at its Michigan Assembly and Stamping Plants in May so it can begin retooling the site’s facilities for production of the 2019 Ford Ranger and 2020 Ford Bronco. The location will be idled for roughly five months and Ford wants to make it very clear that these are temporary layoffs.

The automaker said in a notice in compliance with the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act that all affected employees will either return to the plant in October or transfer to another factory. Ford also said it would be ending production of the Focus sedan and C-Max on May 7th.

President Barack Obama will be visiting the Ford Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Mich. Wednesday, a plant currently closed due to low demand for both the Focus and C-Max.

Due to slow sales, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles will halt production of the SRT Viper for the next two months, with 91 hourly workers temporarily booted to the unemployment line.