Do we have anyone on this board who has experience working for one or more of our competitors. I am curious if we have more frequent cuts and do our cuts go deeper and wider. I've been with Ford for only 18 months and this is no fun. I've survived but about 20% of my team got cut, many good folks among them.
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in this latest round, ll5's were cut. maybe not as many as needed to be but there were some cut.
OP: if you want to stay in the auto industry, move to a Japanese OEM. They don’t do the kind of every-five-years cycle of bloodletting the US OEMs engage in every time the economy catches a cold. Better yet, get out of automotive entirely.
I've been following the ford layoffs. I'm from GM, we had our haircut in 2019, 14k people - a massive reduction. Can't imagine a mass layoff coming anytime soon. People say the auto industry is cyclic. Isn't that true of any industry?
People call these "lay-offs" since the term reduction in force (RIF) isn't commonly used. Nor is the English colloquialism of "redundancy" in use over here, though I think that's even worse than lay-off for trying to hide the meaning.
Get it straight you are not layoff you have been fired.
Fords layoffs are always ineffective. So it just seems like a thrashing machine, fire then hire even more heads than were fired.
They never achieve producing a better workforce, as that is contrary to the personal interests of the management layers implementing the layoffs.
Until all the LL3, LL4 and LL5 are groomed nothing will change. They are what ails Ford.
Bill Ford is unable/unwilling to do the needful and eliminate all the LL3,LL4,LL5.
I went through the great GM purge of 2019 which was similar to what you guys went through last week. There was a round of voluntaries, months of speculation and then the axe fell over a week. Ours cut deeper, but when it was over it was over. I can’t believe they are still dangling the possibility of additional future cuts in front of you guys.
Historically Ford had a reputation for being the last of the Big Three to implement lay-offs of direct hires, however things shifted about a half-dozen years ago and RIFs of the white-collar workforce via either buyouts or layoffs (mostly these) appears to be the new norm for Ford. This is what the current BoD and C-level believes is the best approach for the company (and their own compensation) so unlikely to change "anytime soon".
I worked for one of our Japanese competitors and went through one round of layoffs there. There was much more communication and people were given advance notice that their job would be eliminated. This gave them plenty of advance notice to find another job and we never knew if a person left out of choice or because their job was being eliminated. They were very respectful with the layoffs but wasted no time in firing a person who wasn’t delivering although firing for cause was rare. I left shortly after the layoffs because the remaining people were working 60-80 hours per week plus being on call. I knew it was time to leave when I told my boss that I had been working 80 hours per week for several months and only saw my children awake on weekends. Their response was that they had been working 90 hours per week. Not an ideal situation for a person with a family or personal life.
Nope. I worked for Walmart from 2007-2017 - a 10 year sentence in purgatory. When I was hired, I thought, wow, the world's largest retailer hired me. After a year, reality set in. The place was put together on twine, sp-t and bailing wire.
In 2008, we had our first 'minor' 1-time layoff since the mid 90's. Nothing major or team impactful. In 2009, we had a another 1-time layoff, a bit larger than 2008.
In 2009, the flood gates opened up. Amazon was kicking our @$$ in everything retail and leadership was so taken by surprise. It was as if WM was so high in their ivory tower, they couldn't see the peasants below. WM then outsourced many departments and decimated every team at the Home Office in Bentonville, AR.
From 2009 - 2014 - I can't really describe anything after that because I was working remote but the sh!tshow continued - we would have weekly layoffs initially. Then they turned to 2x a month then monthly. The layoffs were non-stop during this period. It sounds like the same work environment as Ford, currently.
As you can guess, they got rid of the long term associates first because they made too much money. The poor performers were targeted. Those that were 'lucky' and stayed trained contractors that WM replaced their workforce with. Then those associates were targeted by getting poor performance reviews so they too, could be let go. A lot of people saw the writing on the wall and voluntarily left for greener pastures.
I still have friends at WM and they use derogatory terms to describe the 'scrub' associates that are there and the environment. (Use your imagination.) Quality is in the toilet. The actual American workers are not happy in the least and are just waiting to retire and get the heck out or find better opportunities.