Status: 02/14/2023 10:15 a.m
Thousands of jobs will be lost at US automaker Ford. Many people are losing their jobs, especially at the German locations in Cologne and Aachen. The group informed the workforce about this today.
At Ford, around 4,000 employees in Europe are to lose their jobs by 2025 as part of the switch from car production to electromobility. 2,300 jobs at the Cologne and Aachen locations alone are affected by the plans, as the US group announced in a conference call today.
“The measures announced today align Ford’s product development organization and administrative functions in Europe with a smaller, more focused and increasingly electric product portfolio,” said Germany boss Martin Sander. Ford recently employed around 19,000 people in this country.
Cologne most affected
Most of the jobs in the Cologne development department should therefore be eliminated in the next three years. The carmaker wants to part with 1,700 developers, plus 600 employees in administrative areas, the marketing department and sales. Around 14,000 people currently work for Ford in Cologne and around 200 in the Aachen research center.
Including layoffs in the UK and elsewhere, 3,800 jobs across Europe will be affected. The announcement followed weeks of negotiations with the union. IG Metall wants to present details in a press conference in the morning together with the management. The staff at the Cologne plant should have been informed beforehand. The works council had already made the project public in January and at the time even spoke of an imminent loss of up to 3,200 jobs in Cologne and Aachen.
Late reaction to the electro trend
Ford is currently in a state of upheaval, the car company switched to electric models relatively late. This year, the first pure Ford electric cars manufactured in Europe are to roll off the assembly line in Cologne. The combustion model Fiesta, on the other hand, will be discontinued. Ford is investing billions in Cologne for electrical production, but with the plans that have now become known, the city is losing importance as a development location for the group.
The automaker missed its profit targets last year. Ford is now reacting to this with a radical cure. CFO John Lawler recently announced “very aggressive” measures to reduce production and supply chain costs at the presentation of the balance sheet. In Europe, the pre-tax loss widened to $400 million in the fourth quarter. That was twice as much as in the previous year – with unchanged sales. Experts also see the job cuts in research and development as a result of the cooperation with Volkswagen, from which Ford has the license to build an electric car based on the MEB electric kit. This saves Ford development costs.