The Ford Motor Company and the United Automobile Workers union agreed today on a program that will offer buyouts and other incentives to more than 75,000 Ford workers in the United States to persuade them to leave their jobs.
Ford said it would announce details of an expanded version of its sweeping plan for overhauling the company, called the Way Forward, at 7 a.m. Eastern time on Friday. The new steps are expected to include further cuts in white- and blue-collar jobs, spending cuts and changes in Ford’s lineup of car and truck models and brands.
The buyout program, which had been rumored for weeks, was announced by the union in a fax message sent to leaders of its locals. Ford had no immediate comment.
“Once again, our members are stepping up to make hard choices under difficult circumstances,” the union’s president. Ron Gettelfinger, wrote in the fax. “Now, it’s Ford Motor Company’s responsibility to lead this company in a positive direction — which means using the skills, experience and dedication to quality that U.A.W. members demonstrate every day in order to deliver quality vehicles to customers.”
The terms of the buyout offers were set to be made public later, according to the fax. It said all active U.A.W. members at Ford would be eligible for some kind of incentive, offered on a one-time-only basis.
The company will offer employees who are already eligible to retire incentives to do so; opportunities to retire early or to take a leave of absence before retiring; and incentives for other employees to leave the company. The program appeared to be similar to one offered by General Motors to 113,000 hourly workers earlier this year; about 35,000 G.M. workers took up the offers in that program.
Under the Ford plan, union members who work for Automotive Components Holdings — the business unit made up of auto-parts plants that Ford took back from Visteon, its former parts subsidiary — also would be eligible.
“Our goal is to help our members and their families, and to make sure any reduction in the work force at Ford takes place on a voluntary basis,” said Bob King, the vice president in charge of the U.A.W.’s Ford Department. “We remain deeply concerned about Ford’s loss of market share and committed to working together to deliver vehicles consumers want at a price they can afford.”
The original Way Forward plan, announced in January, called for Ford to cut 30,000 jobs in North America, and close 14 plants through 2012.
But Ford has been hit hard by the decline in sport-utility and pickup-truck sales this year, caused in part by high gasoline prices. Ford has lost $1.5 billion so far this year.
Now Ford is expected to speed up those cuts and plant closings by several years.
Until now, Ford has been offering buyouts and other incentives to workers at certain plants, beginning with those it had already announced would close. About 6,200 workers already have accepted those offers. But that is only one-fifth the number of jobs that Ford, which has 82,000 hourly workers, planned to eliminate under the original Way Forward plan.
Counting both Ford and G.M., nearly 200,000 automobile workers in the United States have now been offered incentives to leave their jobs this year.
Last week, Ford said that its chief executive, William Clay Ford Jr., would give up that post on Oct. 1, though he would remain chairman. The company named Alan R. Mulally, a Boeing executive, as its new chief executive. Mr. Mulally, who has no automotive experience, ran the commercial airplanes group at Boeing, where he worked for 37 years.
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