Ford is cutting costs, and in the face of electric models that are less difficult to produce, that means layoffs. The group is expected to announce more than 4,000 job cuts in the coming weeks, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter. At this stage, the workers would not be worried. The Bloomberg agency for its part evokes the elimination of “up to 8,000 jobs.”
Contacted by AFP, a Ford spokesman declined to “comment on speculation”. But the group has scheduled a conference call on Thursday to give news of its transformation plan to electric vehicles.
“As we have said many times”, to carry out this transition, “we are remodeling our work and modernizing our organization”, the spokesperson stressed in his message.
“We have set clear targets for our cost structure so that we are efficient and fully competitive with the best in the industry,” he added.
$50 billion
Shaken by Tesla and other start-ups, traditional automakers have accelerated the electrification of their ranges in recent years. Ford notably announced in March the creation of a new dedicated entity: Ford Model e.
It then indicated that it wanted to make two million electric vehicles a year by 2026, or a third of its global output, and planned to spend $50 billion on it.
Its leaders had also expressed their desire to reduce spending in the sector dedicated to traditional vehicles to 3,000 million dollars per year. Asked at the time about possible job cuts, the head of this new entity, Ford Blue, stressed that “everything was on the table.”
Source: BFM TV
