Ford Layoffs

ABC World News reported that Ford Motor Company plans on laying off more of its employees and four or five of its 19 plants in North America. The problem that employees at plants on the cutting board say is that their management has underutilized them. Their management is not trying to get them extra work or show their importance. Ford says that the problem is their inability to compete with the foreign markets. This same problem is happening for all the American car manufactures. American manufactures have union labor costs that the other foreign manufactures do not incur. Ford is also going to try to discontinue minivans and other vehicles that are not popular with the general public. Instead Ford will begin to build hybrids and find a new design for a sedan that the public will want to buy.

This directly deals with the recorded announcement of the layoffs that was shown in class. The article gave other details about other companies and how the public views the layoffs where the video only had Bill Ford speaking to his employees and the public. Bill Ford announced the layoffs and that what plants could close in the next two to 12 years. The article is not as personal and emotional as the video was. The article is impersonal because anyone can read it and it isn’t coming from the owner of the company. They are however saying the same ideas but just in a different type of manner.

This announcement affects not only the company and employees but also consumers and investors. The employees at Ford fear that they are going to lose their jobs or have already lost their jobs. This not hurts Ford because if their employees do not have the money they can not buy Ford vehicles, but it also hurts the national economy. Ford loses the ability to have workers get cars out as quick as they could before with all their workers and are making people bitter towards their company for laying them off. Consumers read about Ford laying people off and may feel that the company is not stable and may not be around for as long as they have the car. This can cause fear in the consumers and turn them off from buying Ford vehicles. This same affect happens with investors because they do not feel Ford will make them money and that they are not financially stable. This in turn hurts Ford and causes them to have to layoff their workers which begin the vicious cycle all over again.

I agree with the article that Ford is not able to compete with foreign companies. Foreign manufactures are making cars that are good on gas, dependable, and affordable. American manufactures keep building cars that are large and gas guzzlers. With gas prices as high as they are American people do not want a car that consumes gas. Also American cars just do not last like foreign cars. Most American cars last about eight to ten years, while foreign cars can last for fifteen or more years. I learned how many people they are planning to cut and what plants could be cut. The article also spoke on how Ford needs to find a way to build cars that Americans want to buy so they can begin to pick up their sales. I also learned that Ford plans on building more hybrids which will help them to compete with the foreign market and help out the earth.

The article on CBS news was also written on the Ford layoffs. This article was much more detailed than the first article. The article said that Ford plans on laying off around 30,000 people and close up to 12 North American plants. The article