Ford to axe 1,300 UK jobs as part of 'difficult' business restructure
Ford has announced plans to axe 1,300 jobs in the UK over the next three years as part of a major restructuring programme.
It comes as part of wider plans to cut 3,800 positions across Europe overall, with 2,300 German roles to be removed and 200 from elsewhere in Europe.
Ford said 2,800 engineering roles will be axed by 2025, and around 1,000 jobs in its administrative, marketing, sales and distribution teams across Europe are set to go.
The cuts equate to around one in five back-office jobs at the car company.
The BBC reports the car maker is cutting back on "development staff" and most of the UK's job losses will be at its research site at Dunton in Essex.
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Production sites at Halewood, Dagenham and Daventry are thought to not be affected by the announcement today.
Today's job cuts make up just around 40% of Ford's European product development team.
This is roughly in line with the chief executive Jim Farley’s predictions from November last year that the group needed 40% fewer staff to develop battery models.
The American car maker said the shake-up will pave the way for a profitable future and to compete with rival car brands in Europe, which has faced significant economic and political challenges.
It also said the job losses would help create a "leaner, more competitive cost structure" for the business and help with the transition toward a smaller, more focused and increasingly electric product portfolio.
Ford will begin consultations with its social partners across Europe with the intent to achieve job cuts through "voluntary separation programs".
In Europe, Ford expects to sell only electric cars by 2030 and will phase out engine-driven vans by 2035.
Ford said it will keep around 3,400 engineering roles in Europe, that will be focused on vehicle design and development, as well as the creation of connected services.
Martin Sander, the general manager of Ford Model in Europe, said: "These are difficult decisions, not taken lightly. We recognise the uncertainty it creates for our team, and I assure them we will be offering them our full support in the months ahead.
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"We will engage in consultations with our social partners so we can move forward together on building a thriving future for our business in Europe."
Currently, the business has 34,000 staff in Europe including 6,500 in the UK.
Jim Holder, editorial director, What Car?, said: “Ford’s announcement underlines once again the scale of the one-in-a-century transformation that the automotive industry is undergoing, and the depths of change it is having to embrace to maintain profitability while investing the hundreds of billions required to make the electric transition.
“The UK had been at the heart of Ford’s automotive empire for decades, but its position has been eroded by a succession of job cuts and plant closures. If the Government is serious about preserving roles in this sector it needs a strategy that puts the industry on the front foot to take advantage of the green revolution.
“Today, we lag behind our European neighbours and risk being overwhelmed by the investment going into the sector in the USA and China.”
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