This news is enough to knock your wind out:
Ford Motor Co., the nation’s second-largest automaker, said Monday that it will cut 25,000 to 30,000 jobs and idle 14 facilities by 2012 as part of a restructuring designed to reverse billion-dollar losses in North America.
more below…
Update [2006-1-23 11:35:0 by Man Eegee]:Some details from Bloomberg:
The closings will include assembly plants in Atlanta, St. Louis and Wixom, Michigan, and two unidentified plants by 2008, the company said in a statement today on PR Newswire. [snip]
Ford had 122,877 employees in its North American auto operations at the end of 2004, including 35,000 salaried employees. Detroit-based GM, Ford’s bigger U.S. rival, had 173,000 U.S. employees in North America at the end of September 2005, down from 181,000 at the end of 2004. GM had 106,000 hourly and 36,000 salaried U.S. employees at the end of September.
I was listening to NPR this morning on the drive to work, and they mentioned that the job cuts will be in addition to previously announced layoffs for their salaried work force. The round will also be coupled with the closure of several of its factories. That has real consequences in areas that have long relied on the job market these facilities provide.
The Bush Economic Experiment is blowing up in the face of hard workers across this country. I know plenty of middle class workers that vote for Republicans because they feel its in their best financial interest. Isn’t it far past the time when everyone say together in a loud voice, “Where’s the beef?”
The Bubble Presidency will continue as long as its horrific policies are met with soft murmurs of outrage or worse, silence, instead of calls for real accountability by Congress and the people who elected them.
While tens of thousands of Ford workers wait to hear of the fate of their careers, George continues to smirk. It’s as if he is driving us all down a rocky 4×4 trail in a Mustang without a spare tire. Wanna bet the gas tank is full? He has alot more planned for his passengers.
Buckle up.
Crossposted from my humble blog.
I feel so bad for the communities that will be affected by the news. I know what it’s like to live in an area where one company lords over the job market, and announces its closure. The effects last decades.
All my republican friends and family knew that Bush PAID my husband’s company 20 million to move to Malaysia. A BONUS to drop the R&D portion of the computer substrate company. People in Santa Rose and San Jose lost their jobs. High-end jobs. Jobs iwth insurance, benefits.
The severance checks we got were considered bonues and we were taxed heavily on it. No job, no medical coverage and then scrambling to pay taxes that next year.
They ALL KNEW BUSH FUCKED US and they still voted for him.
They’ll continue to drive their Ford Trucks because NOW they’ll be a bit more cheaper since more of it will be made by a 16 year old who now is being paid to get a job by our Bush.
Fuck Bush for fucking over our country.
Sorry: Ventage.
The biggest Republican lies:
that they are
Pro-Military
Pro-Working Class
nothing could be farther from the truth.
their propaganda works. Even though it is a steaming pile of crap, they repeat their lies over and over again until the people start to believe them. I don’t know how to counter it, other than calling them on their B.S. and making sure we get our message out as frequently as them, and more.
Sorry to hear about the screwing your family received. As for the co-workers who voted for Shrub, I fear they are beyond reach. FSM knows that enough proof of his incompetence has been provided to open their eyes.
Counter-Commercials.
The ulitmate in soundbytes.
What I want to do when I grow up. …
Ford Truck Man counter-commercial
Your basic Ford commercial but showing the little kids working on the auto line. Cut to a little child standing on a box in order to reach the line. Letters under his dirty, oily face. His Malaysian name, 8 and wage.
with:
“I’m a Ford Truck Man”
Man with 3 kids carrying his pink slip to the welfare office. The long line is full of men/women with their Ford auto-line smocks.
Close up of the newly released employee who now can’t pay his families bills.
I was a Ford Truck Man. I no longer am.
Those are brilliantly simple and to the point, janet but I bet that none of the networks would run them..to much ‘reality’ for them.
They’re our airwaves. Jack em during the SuperBowl 🙂
I bet two teenagers could do it with equipment from home.
That’s what the Kansas book is all about, how people are now voting against their own self-interests. Perception has come to be everything, substance is secondary.
Yup.
And even IF they open their yes a tad bit, they blame some liberal or “liberal media”.
My grandmother insisted that liberals were crazy for trying to blame “poor George” for the weather…
I tried to explain they weren’t upset about the hurricanes but about his lack of actions during and afterwards… nevermind that he fucking stole from the levees…
They’re morons. They believe in a hateful, vengeful G-d and Bush. Nothing I can say or do will ever change their child-like faith in those two things.
Via the Toronto Star:
See this is what the working clsas stiff will think:
Poor Ford has to CLOSE factories down. We’re all hurting, it’s no wonder the big companies are too.
What these media pukes and Bush apologists don’t tell them is that they are indeed closing down plants, factories but REOPENING them up elsewhere.
14 factories closed down but shine the light on where they were reopened so that Ford can make a shitload of money.
Spin, baby, spin.
Agree janet…let us watch how many Ford plants open up overseas. Just like the oil companies with record profits last year at the same time oil is rumored to hit $100 per barrel by the end of ’06.
I believe “they” are doing all in”their” power to make our country into the haves and the have nots. “They” are also doing it at a record pace. Just look at all the closings this past year. Wiping out a “lower class” section of New Orleans, not because of the hurricane but because of the levee money being held back. People having to choose between heating their homes or taking their medicines. Billions upon billions of “our tax dollars” going to the likes of Halliburton and Lockhead. Whenis the rest of AMerica going to wake up? Maybe they are in a coma and will never wake up. That is scarier than any terrorist threat right now. Sorry for the reamble. I feel so helpless at times.
BTW Janet: If you didn’t know, the latest Ford Innovation is to make their Accord Clones (Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan, Lincoln Zephre) in Mexico.
I was reading this yesterday and people that work there are calling this ‘Black Monday’.
I wonder just how much longer this can keep happening before the whole country is out of work-working at McDonalds or Wal-Mart or a casino is not working in the sense that that’s a livable wage-even if both people in the family are working there.
Last week I read also that with Bank of America’s merger they will be cutting 6000 jobs, Toys R US is closing I think 75 stores and cutting some 3000 jobs and Office Max is closing ALL the stores here.
The country is going to be one big bread line. Unless republicans somehow outlaw bread lines.
Well, don’t forget the Military, Chocolate Ink…I gather we’re low on cannon fodder.
I’m speechless. That says it all, in a nutshell.
Yes, and I wasn’t trying to be funny or glib either…bread lines would somehow become unpatriotic or send a message to the terrorists they Americans didn’t like to work or that we were weak and couldn’t take care of ourselves and thus they’d outlaw them.
Last night while I was making dinner in the kitchen, I was listening to some news show that my roommate had on in the living room. The first handful of stories were: the stock market selloff from last week, this massive Ford layoff, the rising minimum payments on credit cards coming due (no mention of the new bankruptcy restrictions, though), the fed using interest rate adjustments to try to prevent big trouble, the cost of the war in Iraq, rising energy costs and oil price issues, the ongoing trend of Americans spending more than we make, and the real estate market slowing down.
I wound up calling out to Roomie, “Okay, am I Gloomy Gus or does it sound like there’s some kind of totally fucked up Economic Perfect Storm brewing on the horizon?”
NOt only that of which you all have mentioned above, are the ancillary business’ that are going to be affected. Just think of ancillary book store down the street will be affected. Small business’ that depend on the $$$$ flow from the workers to provide their business. The ones who make the parts that go into those cars/trucks. The local eatery whose livelihood depends on the workers going out to eat or even hire the wife or child of the worker. It goes on and on. This will make a ghost town for many whose towns were dependent on these factory’s. It can/could go on indefinitely if we chose to interview the ppl.
Now what could the Red Regime do with all those ghost towns??
FEMA replacement camps aka concentration camps
The Big Money Item – places to build prisons. Can tell the people that their bookstore and deli will be frequented by guards now.
It makes me sick. All of it.
Just to make your day even better. Just checked the closing NYSE closing price of Ford today. $8.32 up .42 = up 5.316 % from Friday. In case you were confused about where our priorities lie these days.
Our Ford plant (St. Louis) is on the list of closures. It will not only affect the auto workers at the plant, but the businesses in the vicinity of the plant. The little mom and pop restaurants that cater to the workers. They were interviewing some of those people on the news last night. I almost felt sorrier for them than for the auto workers.
As you mention and brenda did above it not only is the auto workers themselves but the entire economy of the towns by these plants. This is all interconnected and I wonder just how many more small business will go out of business because of this or even larger businesses that will see their bottom line drop when their customers can’t afford to shop there?
Some small town next to one of the plants that will be closing said they relied on the auto business or that revenue for about 10% or a million.04% for the towns budget. Now the mayor has to figure out a way to come up with that amount from somewhere else or more likely cut funding for city run programs, jobs and other things related to running the town.
A little bit against the received wisdom above: Ford isn’t cutting back in order to open up plants abroad. They are cutting back so they don’t go bankrupt, which is a real possibility. Ford stock is greatly devalued. They cannot sustain operation with the products that they have, given their lack of reliability and their lack of fit to the oil crisis. Bill Ford, who took on leadership of the company relatively recently, is trying, desperately, to make a big shift toward more environmentally appropriate vehicles that will work better, last longer, and sell better. This cutback, is a stopgap until they do produce vehicles that will be more successful. It may be too late, and Ford may go under.
The reality is, that Ford’s crisis may just be the harbinger of a bigger fall to come: General Motors is the truly fragile company in the auto industry. It is huge, ungainly, wracked with redundancies and almost unmanageable in its organization. It is in terrible danger of collapse, and if it does, the rest of the country will suffer as Michigan is beginning to.
Good thought but as you say it might be too little too late. Frankly, although I’m very sad that the St. Louis autoworkers are losing their jobs, I myself never had any intention of EVER buying a gas guzzling Ford SUV and I would try to dissuade anyone I knew who was thinking of making such a purchase.
I also used to own GM cars, doing my part to help the American economy — but I would never go back to them after owning a Toyota.
The time to fight this has long passed- this is Nafta in its essence amd yes that was a Clinton program. So sorry it hit so many in the head so late.
Dear Man Eegee: Thanks for this. I live about a twenty minute drive from the, soon to be, former Ford Wixom Mi. plant. Thought about writing something about this, but did not have the stomach for it. We have got to get what is left of our manufacturing industry anticipating trends in consumer spending much better than they have in my lifetime. That, plus a universal health care system that removes the burden of providing health insurance for their employees, wouldn’t hurt either! Hiring Jerome as a consultant might not be a bad idea?!
I have wondered if they do not anticipate consumer trends because they believe they set consumer trends through their advertising. I see that instead of touting smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles they’re still hawking the bigger and better trucks and SUVs. That may be because they can’t turn their manufacturing around fast enough. I don’t know enough to be sure.
hey keepinon, my heart is with you and your comrades in the area. I remember when the copper mines in my hometown area started closing, it was as if a dark cloud descended on everyone’s mood. Some of these people have spent their entire working lives in these factories and will now have to search for comparable jobs that could use their skills. I completely agree about the healthcare issue too.
As someone who retired several years ago after putting in 30 odd years in the auto industry, I see a repeat of the decline that gripped the steel industry.Our auto industry is now on life support, not because our workers are less skilled or lack work ethic,but because the management of the industry, like many other industries in our economy, has fallen into the hands of accountants and money managers, who have no interest in the products or the technology.They want results yesterday without investing any brain power into the work.
It is a fair question, I think, to ask, how come Honda and Toyota are able to use the same American workers and run efficient and profitable corporations whose products are universally liked and people are actually willing to pay a premium for them, while GM and Ford cannot even give their junk away.
In a larger sense,the decline and fall of the U.S. auto industry may presage the decline and fall of the American Empire which has squandered the many gifts that have come its way but I am too upset right now to talk about it.Many of my friends and their families are suffering in Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin right now.
First I think a couple of factors that have not been taken into account in the discussion so far. The problem with profitablility only relates to Ford’s US operations. Its plants in Europe and other areas are profitable. These are not “outsourced” in the conventional sense, they are plants which were opened, soome in the first couple of decades of the 20th century, to serve local markets and indeed their sucess is due to exactly that. They have been building vehicles that the buying public want and these are not generally the SUV type. In that context, it is not surprising that the stock market envisages greater profiability for Ford in the future, with the consequent increase in its share price. Secondly, there is a slight canard in saying that the European plants do not have to pay health insurance or pensions. Pensions are paid to its European workers and often these are as generous as the US ones in terms of being based on final salaries. They also have to pay health insurance but this is usually in the form of a payroll tax, depending on the country. Of course the one area that they do not have to pay is private health insurance for retirees as they are covered by the nationalised system with usually no contributions from former employees.
It seems that the US car industry is echoing that of the UK in the 1970s. Aging or unpopular designs are being built to fairly poor standards by a disillusioned workforce. The home market is shrinking because of better built foreign imports or vehicles built by foreign companies in newer factories. Ford has the advantage that the likes of British Leyland did not have, a profitable overseas manufacturing base to support the home company while it went through restructuring. Fortunately for Ford they also have research centres overseas that have been working on the sorts of solutions like hybrids which are now needed to re-invigorate their US offer. Their current US market share is probably too small to sustain constant design improvements and new designs solely for the US market. While there is no British-owned mass car maker any more, there are a number of highly successful manufacturing plants for multi-national companies. Ironically these often make British designed cars for the world market (e.g. the Mini, Jaguar, Rolls Bentley and Rolls Royce are obvious but some new Renaults are being designed in their UK plants.) The question is whether you welcome these as manufacturing jobs or decry them as being provided by foreign companies.
The plants in UK that you mention and the products they produce are too small to make any dent in Ford’s problems.Ford and GM are now caught in a vise where there is a huge glut of manufacturing capacity worldwide and no amount of “me too” products, including hybrids are going to save the day because, let’s face it, the mystique has been squeezed out of the automobile and it has become just a commodity.A company like Ford which has unfortunately become associated with shoddy products over several decades in the popular mind is not going to be able to survive.Its products are already discounted by the public and that helps erode its profit margins over and above the structural problems they have built in with their union contracts,their legacy costs etc.