Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F) will cut about 7,000 white-collar jobs, about 500 of them this week in the U.S., as part of a major restructuring designed to save the automaker about $600 million per year.
About 1,500 salaried U.S. employees left the company through voluntary buyouts that began last year, while 300 more have already been laid off. The latest round will be completed by day’s end on May 24.
The cuts outside the U.S. are expected to be completed by August. In all, they account for about 10 percent of Ford’s global workforce.
“To succeed in our competitive industry, and position Ford to win in a fast-changing future, we must reduce bureaucracy, empower managers, speed decision-making, focus on the most valuable work and cost cuts,” CEO Jim Hackett wrote in an internal memo that was distributed today.
Ford had signaled for months that an unspecified number of layoffs were coming, and earlier this year it announced thousands of job cuts in Europe, which included salaried workers.