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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.
"The hard decisions to increase value to owners" is more often than not increasing short-term gains at the expense of the company's long-term future. Look at the current slow disintegration of Sears/KMart as it's being slowly gutted instead of finding new ways of making long-term profits or keeping Americans employed. Granted, brick-and-mortar has seen its day, but the really important decisions would be the ones that steered them towards newer growth, not shambling like a zombie until finally all the bits have rotted off and the whole thing collapses forever.
It might be remembered that incorporation is not some sort of inalienable right. Corporate charters are granted by governments, and governments themselves are not supposed to be money-making entities, but rather for the profit of their citizens in many ways, not all of them recordable in dollars and cents. At the moment, a corporate charter can be granted for virtually any legal activity, profit-making or not, but when corporations begin to act to the detriment of their grantors, perhaps it might be advisable to re-think the chartering process.
When you can get a charter that allows you to employ people at rates that make them a drain on your own resources - for example, Wal-Mart's Welfare Employees - or the many cases where a company demands major tax concessions, then outsources, then perhaps the charter should be re-considered.
Don't worry, they'll all get jobs as game developers and social media apprentices.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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...
You mean like the C-Max Energi, the Focus Electric and the Fusion Hybrid?