Workers employed by outside agencies were notified late Friday that it was their last day of work, Ford Motor Co. confirmed to the Detroit Free Press on Saturday.
“People in certain agency positions across a few skill teams were notified by their employers that their assignments at Ford have ended,” Ford spokesman T.R. Reid told the Free Press. “The changes are consistent with the Ford+ plan — aligning capabilities and roles with product and service priorities and, in the process, reducing costs.”
When asked how many people would not be reporting to work Monday, Reid said, “We’re not providing numbers.”
The Ford response came after a Free Press inquiry early Saturday about reports that contract workers had been cut.
“I was let go on Friday when I was wrapping up my work and got a call from my agency. It’s really sad that I haven’t been here more than 3 months and already out,” said a Saturday morning post on a Ford layoffs site. “I’m from Model e space.”
The Free Press reported Friday that Ford planned to begin laying off salaried employees as soon as Monday, targeting the Ford Blue and Model e divisions of the company. Ford Blue designs and builds internal combustion engine vehicles while Model e designs technology and electric vehicles. The Ford Pro commercial unit is not expected to be impacted.
A source with knowledge of the situation but not authorized to speak publicly told the Free Press on Friday that Ford would begin laying off salaried white-collar employees in North America as soon as Monday. A minimum of several hundred white-collar workers are targeted for cuts.
The automaker employs about 174,000 white- and blue-collar workers globally. Ford has about 28,000 white-collar workers in the U.S. and about 70,000 worldwide, a Ford spokesman confirmed to the Free Press.
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The cuts are expected to fall well below the 3,000 jobs slashed in August in the U.S., Canada and India. Most of those cuts were made in Michigan, where Ford is headquartered. Ford cut 580 workers in April 2022 from engineering.
Meanwhile, Ford and other automakers continue hiring even as they lay off workers in an attempt to align skills with a move from gasoline-powered vehicles to electric vehicles and cut costs to pay for new investments requiring billions of dollars.
Contact Phoebe Wall Howard: 313-618-1034 or phoward@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @phoebesaid.