
Ford to cut North America, Asia salaried workers by 10 percent - blcArmadillo
http://reuters.com/article/idUSKCN18C03P
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legitster
I would recommend anyone read the book _American Icon_ , which is about Ford's
rise from the ashes in the 2000s. It's one of those thick reads, but well
worth it.

It's sad to see them struggling, because their car lineup has been absolutely
brilliant for the last few years. But now that the industry is at it's
plateau, investors are very paranoid about any car company trying to invest in
new areas (Ford spent much of it's earnings on tech companies). They would
rather just see dividends instead.

~~~
nvivo
I think it's funny how we never act so selflessly in our entire lifes, but
expect investors, which are people that made their career goal to be good at
making more money, to suddenly grow this moral guideline and be worse at their
job just for the greater good.

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icebraining
Such a small post, so many strange ideas:

1) That choosing investment over dividends must be a selfless act that makes
one worse at their job (rather than simply a different option, possibly even
more lucrative).

2) That "we" (who?) don't make life choices for selfless reasons, when it's
plainly obvious that many do.

3) The idea that investors don't have a moral guideline AND that that's
somehow acceptable.

I didn't downvote you, by the way.

~~~
stupidhn
> _That choosing investment over dividends must be a selfless act that makes
> one worse at their job (rather than simply a different option, possibly even
> more lucrative)._

This implies that they can't do both investing and paying dividends at the
same time. What leads you to believe investment by F isn't sufficient?

~~~
icebraining
I have absolutely no opinion on the investment choices by Ford, you should ask
legitster about that.

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ensiferum
If the goverment wants jobs then why don't they just do so?

They have the mandate to create new regulation. They could for example say
that pumping gas at the station is a job that requires training and only
qualified personnel can do this job.

That would instantly create new jobs and the businesses would be forced to
accommodate.

Hiring someone is a last recourse for any business since it's very expensive
so you can't expect businesses to magically create jobs.

~~~
nvivo
As someone from a country where this happens (in Brazil it's mandatory to have
employees to handle fuel pumps in order to protect jobs), I think it's crazy
to even think this is a good idea. We have very expensive fuel and I'm
required to wait in line because I need to wait for an employee to be there to
do something I can do faster. As result, we have terrible service with an
expensive price.

Jobs must exist by market demand, artificially creating jobs is the worst
thing a country can do. Every law had good intentions, it's always the
indirect side effects that cause problems.

~~~
Spooky23
I don't think these things are very much related.

I live in New York... New Jersey has mandatory pump attendants and the prices
are all on-par or cheaper than surrounding states.

For all of the bellyaching, i don't think that people are as expensive as they
seem.

~~~
mathattack
How much of that is due to taxes?

~~~
downrightmike
18.4 cents per gallon (3.75 liters or so)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States)

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MichaelBurge
> A person briefed on the plan said Ford plans to offer generous early
> retirement incentives to reduce its salaried headcount by Oct. 1

Why do companies offer early retirement incentives? Wouldn't it be cheaper to
wait until the day(or week or month) that you'd otherwise offer them to leave
on, and fire them right then without any benefits? Especially since the stated
purpose of it is to save money.

Ford in particular would probably get some negative PR. And since the most
expensive employees are older, they might try to sue you for age
discrimination. Is it just risk mitigation, or does Ford actually benefit from
the incentive? 10% might be too large of a change to do all at once,
especially at Ford's size; so buying them off lets them get rid of people
gradually without surprising people.

I can understand why executives have to be bought off: They usually negotiate
an accelerated stock vesting if they get fired without cause. What about
anyone below that?

~~~
legitster
Simple answer: Unions. They can't just layoff people without repercussions.

Complex answer: Businesses that have been around this long have learned to
survive by not making enemies. A tenant of this brand of capitalism is that it
is cheaper to make mutually beneficial deals than to 'win'.

Also, because the brand is so tied up in American identify, and many of their
workers are their own consumers, they don't want to muddy the waters,
especially if they expect to hire back some of the same workers again later.

~~~
ph0rd
>Simple answer: Unions. They can't just layoff people without repercussions.

salaried employees at ford aren't unionized, for the most part.

The rest of this is correct.

