JANUARY 12, 2002

Ford's mammoth job cuts

The Ford Motor Company has announced that it is to close five of its factories in North America and lay-off 35,000 workers.

THE Ford Motor Company has announced that it is to close five of its factories in North America and lay-off 35,000 workers. Two -thirds of the jobs are to go are in the US. The company chairman William Clay Ford said the cuts were "painful but necessary".

The job-cutting is design to cut the company's production capacity by a million cars a year because of the over-capacity in the automobile business at the moment.

Despite the cuts, the high-profile but unsuccessful Jaguar Racing in F1 program is to remain untouched.