Ford Motor: Early retirement offers to cut labor costs

DETROIT: Ford Motor Co. said Thursday it will offer buyout and early retirement packages to all 54,000 U.S. hourly workers in an effort to cut more jobs and replace workers with those making a lower wage.

Chief Executive Alan Mulally said the new round of buyouts was negotiated with the United Auto Workers union.

He said the first round would be offered immediately to workers who had been employed at already closed plants in Atlanta; St. Louis; Edison, New Jersey; and Norfolk, Virginia. Those offers close Feb. 28.

Employees are expected to leave the company by March 1, Mulally said during a conference call with reporters and industry analysts to discuss the company's 2007 earnings.

The second round of buyouts would go to workers at all other U.S. Ford locations, opening the week of Feb. 18 and closing March 17. Mulally said workers who take packages in this round would likely leave the company starting April 1, with all of them gone by year's end.