Ford expanding in Asia, adding jobs in US

Ford Fusion is the company's best-selling car in North America: shifting production from Mexico to the US could add 4,000 jobs for American Ford workers.

Ford is talking about adding between 7,000 and 10,000 new jobs over the next two years in the US as it expresses confidence about its future growth potential and about the country's ability to avoid recession. The company is currently in discussions with the UAW for a new four-year contract and the 10,000 jobs target is part of those discussions. Earlier in the year, Ford CEO Alan Mulally spoke of plans to add 7,000 jobs in the US. There are currently 75,000 Ford employees at Ford North America.

Mulally spoke of the company's expansion as "relatively less than we've had following previous recessions. But clearly the recession we went through is the worst that we've had since the Depression, so we're very encouraged by the recovery."

Jobs have been a central goal of the union in this round of negotiations. Hiring entry-level workers would help Ford lower its labour costs: they start at about $14 an hour, half what senior employees make.

Much of Ford's expansion is in the Asia-Pacific region where it remains "substantial," compared to Europe, where growth has slowed. The company plans to boost sales by 50 per cent, to 8 million vehicles worldwide, by 2015. Along with Toyota and General Motors, Ford is using Thailand as a global production hub, thanks to tax incentives and trade arrangements granting access to Southeast Asia's hundreds of millions of consumers. Ford has invested $1.3 billion in Thailand in the past three years.

Ford's US market share rose to 16.8 percent this year through August from 16.7 percent last year, according to researcher Autodata Corp. Under Mulally, the carmaker has been diversifying its model lineup, including adding the Fiesta subcompact. It earned $9.28 billion in the last two years after losing $30.1 billion from 2006 through 2008.

Ford's top-selling car in the US is the Fusion. Last year Ford sold just over 219,000 of the cars in the US. At the end of August, 169,000 Fusions had been sold, an increase of 16 per cent over the same period last year. The Fusion is built in Mexico, and it has been suggested that Ford could add about 4,000 jobs to its American plants by shifting production of the Fusion to the US.