Berlin, Feb. 14 (BNA): Ford said on Tuesday that Ford plans to cut 3,800 product development and management jobs in Europe in the next three years, citing rising costs and the need for a leaner structure with production geared towards electric vehicles.
About 2,300 jobs will be created at the carmaker’s sites in Cologne and Aachen in Germany, 1,300 in the UK and 200 in the rest of Europe, the company said, adding that it intends to make the cuts through voluntary programmes.
The news comes as a blow to unions that said in late January a worst-case scenario was to cut 2,500 jobs in Europe in product development and another 700 in management, Reuters reported.
Ford said in a statement that the cuts were necessary to “revitalize business in Europe.”
The automaker cited its results in early February, and Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said it would be “very aggressive” in cutting expenses in its manufacturing and supply chain operations.
Lawler also said at the time that the productivity of engineers in Europe was 25-30% lower than it should be.
The US group will retain around 3,400 engineers in the region who will build on core technology provided by their US counterparts and adapt it for European customers, said Martin Sander, European electric passenger vehicle (EV) president and Ford Germany president, on a press call.
“There’s a lot less work to be done on the propulsion engines that come out of combustion engines,” Sander said. “We’re moving into a world with fewer global platforms where less engineering work is required. That’s why we have to make adjustments.”
Sander added that nothing has changed in the automaker’s electrification strategy, aiming to offer an all-electric fleet in Europe by 2035.
Sander said Ford is set to launch Europe’s first electric car built on Volkswagen’s MEB platform in Cologne later this year and is considering bringing Ford’s platform to Europe, possibly to its Valencia plant.
“We are preparing our organization to compete and win in a region facing unprecedented economic and geopolitical headwinds,” he said.
Ford’s European employees have recently seen a wave of job cuts in 2019 and 2020 as the automaker sought to achieve an operating margin of 6% in the region, a target eclipsed by the pandemic, with pre-tax profit margins in Europe in the first nine months of the year. 2022 at only 2.2% of sales.
Rial