MichiganRadio

Ford Begins To Reverse Long-term Trend of Laying Off Workers ANN ARBOR, MI (Michigan Radio) - Ford Motor Company announced today at the annual Management Briefings held by the Center for Automotive Research that the company will add another 635 union jobs in the U.S. by 2012.

That's in addition to 13-hundred jobs that Ford already promised to create at nine Ford plants, including plants in Wayne, Sterling Heights and Ypsilanti. It's also 25% more jobs than the company promised the UAW it would bring back to unionized plants in the states.


Mark Fields is Ford's Executive Vice President, and its President of the Americas.

"Part of it is bringing jobs back to the U.S.," says Fields, "For example, bringing jobs on the battery pack assemblies from Mexico back to Michigan. The transaxles for our next generation hybrids, are currently done in Japan. That's going to come back to our Sterling Heights facility."

Ford is also hiring some new workers at its Chicago assembly plant.

The number of new jobs is dwarfed, however, by the number of layoffs at Ford over the past few years. In 2006, Ford said it would cut at least 25-thousand employees through 2012.

Ford has not been the only auto company re-hiring laid-off workers, or hiring new workers. Overall, U.S. automakers have hired 55,000 people since last year.

President Obama is expected to highlight that trend when he visits Ford's Chicago assembly plant, where the automaker will build the 2011 Ford Explorer.

The plant was the beneficiary of a $400,000 Department of Energy grant to help automakers retool plants in order to build more fuel-efficient vehicles.

The new Explorer will get between 20% and 30% better fuel economy than the old Explorer. © Copyright 2012, Michigan Radio