Ford Eyes April 6 Manufacturing Restart, Execs to Defer Salary
Photo: Ford
Ford is looking to bring several major production facilities back online as soon as April 6, the automaker said Thursday. Hermosillo Assembly Plant in Mexico expects to resume one shift on April 6, and additional plants will aim to reopen on April 14.
Ford President of North America Kumar Galhotra earlier this week announced that Ford had reconsidered its original projection of reopening North American manufacturing on March 30. Working with United Auto Workers and Unifor, Ford days later lands on April 6 as its projected relaunch for operations in Hermosillo.
Should this plan remain intact, April 14 would then see the restart of production at Dearborn Truck Plant, Kentucky Truck Plant, Ohio Assembly Plant, and the Ford Transit line at Kansas City Assembly. Ford did not specify whether these relaunches would be single shifts or full capacity. This would also result in operations resuming at the Dearborn Stamping, Dearborn Diversified Manufacturing, and Sharonville Transmission plants; the integrated stamping plants at Kansas City and Kentucky Truck; and parts of the Van Dyke Transmission, Lima Engine, and Rawsonville Components plants.
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Hackett, other Ford execs will defer salary
Photo: Ford
A Securities and Exchanges Commissions filing uploaded to the Ford Shareholder site on Thursday revealed that several key Ford executives will defer part or all of their salaries for the foreseeable future. Executive Chairman Bill Ford will forego 100 percent of his base salary for the next five months while CEO Jim Hackett, COO Jim Farley, and CFO Tim Stone will defer 50 percent of their salaries. The deferments take effect May 1.
Per Automotive News, Hackett wrote a letter to Ford employees this week noting that the top 300 executives in the company will defer between 20 and 50 percent of their base salaries until the company has repaid $7 billion of the $15.4 billion in credit it tapped last week. At that point, the deferred salary will be repaid to those executives, including Hackett.
Hackett also said that the company will be deferring merit-based salary increases, suspending overtime for salaried workers, and potentially reducing pay for employees not able to work from home. Further, he suggested that the company, despite the goal of not having to lose any jobs, may need to “take tougher actions” if the pandemic stretches on longer than anticipated.
Hackett’s base salary in 2018 was $1.8 million, but his total compensation was $17.75 million including stock awards, bonuses, and incentives. Hackett’s 2018 pay was 276 times the median employee salary.
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Kyle S. Johnson lives in Cincinnati, a city known by many as “the Cincinnati of Southwest Ohio.” He enjoys professional wrestling, Halloween, and also other things. He has been writing for a while, and he plans to continue to write well into the future. See more articles by Kyle.