Slashdot Mirror
Ford To Cut North America, Asia Salaried Workers By 10 Percent (reuters.com)
Ford is planning a major round of layoffs that will cut up to 20,000 jobs around the world, according to reports published Monday. From a report: Ford plans to shrink its salaried workforce in North America and Asia by about 10 percent as it works to boost profits and its sliding stock price, a source familiar with the plan told Reuters. A person briefed on the plan said Ford plans to offer generous early retirement incentives to reduce its salaried headcount by Oct. 1, but does not plan cuts to its hourly workforce or its production. The move could put the U.S. automaker on a collision course with President Donald Trump, who has made boosting auto employment a top priority. Ford has about 30,000 salaried workers in the United States. The cuts are part of a previously announced plan to slash costs by $3 billion, the person said, as U.S. new vehicles auto sales have shown signs of decline after seven years of consecutive growth since the end of the Great Recession.
If they want to avoid the ire of our President when they only lay off Americans. It sounds like I'm joking but I'm not - this is the type of perverse unintended consequences that government intervention brings.
Because consumers have to pay the wages. Auto makers have to hold onto employees well-beyond their usefulness because of union contracts, and you have to pay the charity that keeps those people benched instead of out working other jobs making stuff you're buying with the money you're not spending on cars.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Comrade Trump wants to plan the economy, but the poor guy is nearly a century late for the Bolshevik revolution. People are probably wondering why Republicans nominated what would turn out to be the furthest-left president since FDR. It started like this...
Republicans used to try to trick voters into thinking they were conservatives, because Democrats were trying to establish the liberal brand. It was sort of working out (for Democrats, though less so for Republicans) until 2008. That year, a Republican named Obama infiltrated the Democratic party and won the presidential election. A small number of voters got upset (remember those "Occupy Wall Street" losers, who would perform protests but not a single one of which could be bothered to campaign for elections, or even vote in them?), but mostly, people didn't notice.
This caused a problem for Republicans, though. They had a conservative Democrat president, whom they had to oppose, and they didn't have any candidates as far to the right, who could mock Obama's "liberalism" with their superior conservativism.
There was only one thing to do. They switched to left -- mock Obama's conservativism with their superior liberalism. Trump shined with his New Deal. He was going to Make America Great Again, like his forebears in 1933.
I get why they did it, but does anyone know why all the right/left voters still swear allegiance to the same parties they used to? Lefties now vote for right-leaning candidates, and righties now vote for left-leaning candidates. It's a strange situation and nobody can explain the voter perspective. Why did people with gunracks vote for a communist? Why did people in tie-dye vote for The Man (Hillary)? It's so weird!
Well, maybe the answer is to stop pretending that companies can - or should - 'take care' of their employees any more. A good start would be to adopt universal health and unemployment insurance, so that companies aren't dragged down by a government expectation that they will provide those things - when their foreign competitors can rely on their governments to provide them. Of course that ignores your bit about loyal employees - which are certainly worth something...
Still, if you're 'pro business' in this country you're also expected to be 'anti government'. The two don't add up. The best way to have a strong middle class is to have good, well-paying jobs and secure benefits. And the best way to have healthy companies is to have a strong middle class to buy their products. But in this country at this time, we have the worst of both. And a weak middle class produces a viscous circle of need for government safety net programs to deal with the carnage.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...