Go Ford. I hope this is a sign of things to come.

Woohoo !!!!!
They have turned the corner.
Lets hope that it continues.

Congratulations Ford! Way to lay off 6,400 North American workers. This has been long overdue!!!

Better than folding and everyone losing their job!

This begs the question. Is it better to have hired and fired (American companies), or never to have hired at all (Japanese companies)?

To some people, even if there are too many employees at the company, and you have people sitting around doing nothing, it's NOT alright to layoff workers in order to size the company to the amount of employees that are needed.

I work for one of the many companies that does business with Ford, and it's not even a challenge to bring up all the humorous stories of people taking 3 months of paid vacation and sick days througout the year, people drinking on the job and falling asleep at their station on the line (major safety hazard), yet keeping their job. The fantastic stories of the IT guys waiting at a truck all day which contains the computers that they are required to setup. Why are they sitting there doing nothing? Because they're not allowed to take the computers off the truck. It's the union guys' job. 1/2 hour of work turns into 4 hours because one employee isn't allowed to complete a simple step. 3.5 hours of wasted time at most companies means that those movers can be fired, and the IT guys can move the computers for now on.

Now don't get me wrong, it is definitely an issue of management. However, when you're managing 100 people when you should be managing the 20 it would take to do the job, things get lax and overcomplicated.

Get rid of extra employees. Save money and grow the business so that it can again begin to hire employees that it NEEDs! In this way, people are getting paid what they deserve, they're busy at work instead of sitting around wasting time all day, and the company as a whole reaps the benefits.

Japanese companies started small and grew with demand. American companies started huge with great demand, but the demand has since shrunk. Don't blame the companies for doing what they're supposed to do in this situation. Hell, you should get down on your knees and thank them for employing so many Americans that they could have done without for so long.

The problem is that the laziest employees are the ones with the most seniority and the last ones to be laid off.

"This begs the question. Is it better to have hired and fired (American companies), or never to have hired at all (Japanese companies)?"

Toyota has North American manufacturing plants, for both cars and parts...

I agree with Hal's comments wholeheartedly, coming from a salaried individual who left Ford only 3 months ago from a prominent large-scale project inside the company, not on a buyout, but because he was tired of management's lack of professionalism and competency at their jobs.

Ford is downsizing, but the people that are being left there are the "leftovers." The bottom line might look prettier now, but the long-term looks bleak...

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