Ford plans still more job cuts

DETROIT - Ford Motor Company, faced by losses that could reach US$9bn this year, is examining yet another round of deep cost cuts focused on white-collar workers, as the beleaguered US car maker seeks to speed up its elusive turnaround.

The new measures were examined at a two-day Ford board meeting expected to end today - the first to be attended by Alan Mulally, the former Boeing executive named last week to replace family scion William Ford Jr as Ford's chief executive.

The latest chapter in the company's long history of woe was revealed by the Detroit News.

The newspaper quoted an internal Ford document that put pre-tax losses by its worldwide car and truck operations at between US$5.6bn and US$5.9bn.

Though most of its international manufacturing was loss-making, the bulk of the deficit came from operations in North America.

Additional restructuring costs could push total 2006 losses to US$9bn.

The latest measures could see a further acceleration of plant closures and job cuts.

Up to 6,000 white-collar jobs could go, with workers facing staff and benefit cuts of up to 30 per cent, the reports said.

All this would be on top of the original "Way Forward" cost-cutting plan announced by Mr Ford in January, under which 30,000 jobs would be lost and 14 plants shut by 2012.

The latest belt-tightening follows a fall in sales of pick-up trucks, Ford's best selling models.

The "Big Three" US car manufacturers - GM, Ford and Daimler Chrysler - have all been hit by the two-edged crisis afflicting the industry here: falling demand for the truck and SUV "gas guzzlers" on which they relied for profits, and sky-high labour costs caused by fixed pension and health care benefits.

But Ford has arguably suffered most.

As well as warning of accelerated white-collar job cuts and plants closures, it has announced it is considering the sale of the specialist luxury brands Jaguar and Aston Martin - even a scheme to take the company private.

Requests for government aid have thus far fallen on deaf ears in a normally business-friendly administration.

President Bush, who has publicly opposed a federal bail-out for Detroit, has twice postponed a summit planned this spring with the CEOs of Ford, GM and Chrysler.

Mr Bush reportedly called Mr Ford last week to tell him that any meeting would have to wait until after the 7 November mid-term elections because of the political sensitivity of the issue.

Ford shares initially rose 9 per cent on the appointment of Mr Mulally.

But they dropped 4 per cent to US$8.82 in early trading on Wall Street yesterday after the latest reports.

- INDEPENDENT