DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co., which already has reduced nearly 40 percent of its workforce since 2005, is ramping up its effort to get UAW-represented hourly workers to leave the company voluntarily -- hosting several job fairs and launching a Web site aimed at helping workers transition to new professions.
The automaker has not disclosed how many hourly workers it would like to leave. But the company failed to meet a target of 8,000 hourly jobs earlier this year, achieving just about half of that.
The Dearborn-based automaker still has 61,000 hourly workers in North America, and it plans to host several job fairs this month and launch a Web site, www.yourjobconnection.org, in an effort to get them to consider taking one of 10 buyout packages now being offered at select plants in Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky.
Ford has "more people than jobs," Joe Hinrichs, Ford's group vice president of global manufacturing and labor affairs, says in a video on the new job site.
"We're expecting things to stay difficult for the next few years," he says.
Ford already has lost $8.6 billion through the first half of this year, on top of $15.3 billion over the past two years.
What's more, Ford's sales in the critical U.S. market have fallen 15.8 percent through August. That has caused Ford to temporarily idle several factories, leaving the company with thousands of excess workers that it must continue paying under its labor agreement with the UAW. Unless, of course, it can convince them to voluntarily leave.
"I urge you to carefully consider these programs," said Bob King, UAW vice president and director of the union's Ford department.
King says it is the union's "deep hope" that Ford and the UAW can work together to bring the workforce to the appropriate level.
The packages Ford is offering workers to leave include a lump sum of $100,000, early-retirement incentives, and educational opportunities to receive a two- or four-year college degree.
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