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Ford Motor Company is laying off some of its workers, and around 3,000 people are affected. The automaker is cutting jobs of its salaried and contract workers in its corporate unit in India and North America.
According to Reuters, Ford Motor is doing this as part of its restructuring process to shift to the production of electric vehicles. The move is said to be an effort to attain the goal of catching up with Tesla Inc. and be a frontrunner in the development of software-driven EVs.
It was reported that the company’s chief executive officer, Jim Farley, has actually been mentioning for months that he thinks Ford has too many staff, but most of them do not have the skills required for digital services and EV development. They need more people with expertise in these areas because they are moving towards these sectors.
"Building this future requires changing and reshaping virtually all aspects of the way we have operated for more than a century," CNN Business quoted the Ford CEO and executive chairman Bill Ford, as saying in their joint message addressed to Ford employees. "It requires focus, clarity, and speed. And, as we have discussed in recent months, it means redeploying resources and addressing our cost structure, which is uncompetitive versus traditional and new competitors."
Farley added that they “absolutely have too many people in certain places, and we have skills that do not work anymore so we have jobs that need to change." He further explained that they are currently reshaping the company and working on simplifying their ICE (internal combustion engine) business and stressed they need to make sure to only have workers with skills for their new projects.
Meanwhile, the latest 3,000 job cuts are mainly due to Ford Motor’s shift from the traditional internal combustion engine cars to electric vehicles. It was noted that 2,000 of those who will be eliminated are jobs with salaried positions while the other 1,000 people are contractors. The company will start notifying the affected workers this week.
