Bad news at Ford Motor

Ford reportedly preparing to slash 8,000 jobs to help fund EV transition (msn.com)

 

I can do their job for $8 a hour.

 

Its really weird I thought everyone said this green EV movement would create jobs not the reverse.

huh go figure

Sure am glad I got an old school 4R. I can’t imagine the build quality on a new EV and the lower moral at Ford as they people off.

 

As opposed to the ~100.000 Tesla employs worldwide?
Different technologies require different skills . What are they gonna do with all those people building engines and transmissions? Designing a new engine every year model when the outgoing one was just as good and efficient? Toyota seems to get it a lot better than the domestics. Corolla, 4Runner. Layoffs at Toyota? Haven't heard anything yet.
Some of these people will end up building batteries and electric motors. The software side is way bigger now, lots of brilliant minds to be hired to put things together. It wont be as easy as outsourcing to India and calling it a day, like they did with Sync and all the other garbage. Have you seen what a software mess the Mach E is? My 2019 Stang would reboot at 70mph on the highway.
So yes, EV movement does create way more jobs than it replaces. Think about all the whip makers, all the carriage builders and so on.
8000 people is nothing compared to the whole automotive world. I didn't hear VW letting go of their workforce and yet they delivered like 200.000 electric ID4s...
Ford is top heavy with too many mid-level managers and "executives". Typical bureaucratic company where the left hand has no clue what the right hand is doing.
On top of that, you have the Ford Motor Credit company which provides all the money for the financing - they don't tell you about that. All that money will be repaid in a few years, people still do make car payments, but for laying 8000 people off, it sounds way more disastrous than it is. Gotta make it grim, otherwise how can one justify the "savings"?
Do you think those fat bonuses on the top pay themselves?

 

More jobs will be created once EV’s get to be the norm. Ford is trying to lessen the financial blow temporarily to get the EV ball rolling. Any major transition will have this happen, it’s gonna be ok. Maybe the assemblers need to update their skill set, a machine can do that work.

 

Describe that please.

 

The whole Sync system would go blank on its own. No music, no radio, no screen, no phone calls, no Bluetooth. The dashboard would be ok, still could drive. After a few minutes, you'd see the mustang logo and the system would come online. Soft reboot, hard reboot, button reset, master reset, software upgrades to the latest, nopes, same behavior. It was worse on the 2019 than it was on our 2015.

 

Wow, not good. I was imagining the car shutting off completely and coasting. That would be worse.

 

Getting rid of 8,000 workers earning an average of $50,000/yr means Ford can apply 400 Million towards the EV growth fund. Probably more than that actually considering Pensions and Health Car, etc. So ~ 1/2 Billion $$.......

 

Hopefully they looked ahead years ago and started letting attrition reduce the workforce some.

 

Get the immigrants up there? They will work hard and get the job done?

 

No need for them when you can do it for $8/hr!

 

EV cars simply aren't as complicated as ICE cars. There are far less parts. Job loss was inevitable. There may be new jobs, but the old jobs aren't going to be around because the old ways of doing things are going to be obsolete. Considering how much less complicated EVs are, the overall total number of jobs in the industry long term is probably going to shrink.

If anyone ever promised that it's going to become a workers' paradise under the EV future, dislike the person who promised that to you, not the EV.

 

Yep, technology has reduced jobs in certain areas, and grown in others

 

You can cover all 8000 for $8 an hour? That's an impressive work ethic.

 

Hey man, I just saw the “Crown” line up. Ford is F’ed.

 

Or more likely just increasing the profit margin and shareholder earnings.

Jalopnik reported that Ford is laying off 4,000 white collar workers as part of a goal to increase margins from 7% to 10%. Not sure if these 4,000 are part of the 8,000.

 

That’s after taxes.

 

Ford has a lot of "executives"

 

Yes, we are. The ones that did an amazing job re-roofing my house last year and the ones that will be in my belly-crawling only attic this August to remove the asbestos contaminated vermiculite get extra cash bonuses from me for working hard. The D-bag tattooed chain smoking bro-dozer driving 'Muricans who were working on our collapsed basement foundation drains and then thought it was OK to stand in our kitchen half dressed and do a sink bath messing up the whole place got nothing.