Aided By Promising Recovery, Ford to Add Jobs

Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F) on Thursday said that it is sticking to its target of hiring more than 7,000 employees in the next two years in its United States facilities.

The company is keeping to its target of employing more people announced earlier and the company isn’t preparing for a double dip recession and instead is looking forward to an economic expansion. At an event in Bangkok, the Chief Executive Officer of Ford, Alan Mulally said that the company has seem growth in United States and are encouraged by this growth, even thou the growth is not at a pace that was seen before the pre-recession years.

The United States second largest auto manufacturer in January had announced its plants to hire around 7,000 employees. At the end of 2010, the company had in the company’s North American facilities around 75,000 employees.

Ford is currently in the process of negotiation the terms of the worker contract agreement with the United Auto Workers Union. Mulally did not comment anything about the ongoing talks with the Union, which if fail, could lead to a strike at Ford’s United States facilities. Various reports indicate that a deal is about to be reached by the end of this week between the two groups, with extended negotiation sessions taking place to finalize the final terms of the agreement.

Mutally without mentioning if the new contract would be an improvement over the existing contract, said that their company and the UAW have a very good track record so far that has helped Ford in remaining competitive.

Ford will also be continuing its plans to expand further in Asia Pacific regions, despite the slowdown in the sales and the reports of slower Indian and Chinese economic growth. Mutally was in China for the beginning of the construction of the engine transmission plant that the company is planning in partnership with Changan Automotive Group. Mutally said that even with the slowed down economy, there is still a substantial market for the company’s growth.

Ford is planning to increase its Chinese production and is set to launch 15 models hers by the year 2012. The company has plans to invest around $1.6 billon to manufacture four production units. The company also has plans to increase its global sales by 50 percent by 2012 to around 8 million vehicles. The company in the past two years has experienced a 32 percent growth in China, at a time when businesses in other areas were lagging.

Post Written By: Ed Liston Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.