Ford Motor Company is making a come-back but the upcoming labor negotiations are “critical” to the success of the struggling automaker, a senior executive said Friday.
“Time is not our friend,” admitted Mark Fields, president of the Americas.
“We're going to have to rebuild this business and it's not going to be a quick fix,” he told reporters following a product briefing.
Fields said the company is at a competitive disadvantage because of its current labor costs and that the United Auto Workers union will have to grant the automaker concessions if it is going to be able to succeed in its restructuring.
The company is “ahead of schedule” in terms of reducing capacity and the size of the workforce. Ford has cut 14,000 white collar jobs and 27,000 union jobs since last year, he said.
“Employee moral is not where we want it but it is improving. Employees are slowly beginning to see that the plan is working.”
While he would not provide an earnings forecast, Fields said the company's finances were “beginning to improve.”
It has been hit, however, by rising material costs and a slump in the housing industry which cut into the company's critical pick-up truck business.
Increases sales of new and remodeled vehicles should help the bottom line, Fields said.
Market share stabilized in the first half of the year after 11 years of steady losses.
“We're very focused on the fact that we have to do more to drive showroom traffic,” he said.
“We do face challenges in closing the customer perception gap. We have to work very hard to improve our quality and our fuel economy… But we're going to market with a much more confident tone.”
Among the positive signs are that Ford's new crossover vehicle, the Edge, is now outselling Toyota's Highlander, which had been the leader of the segment, he said.
Sales of the Ford Fusion and the Mercury Milan are also up by double digits this year. Lincoln is now the second fastest growing luxury mark in the United States, he added.
