DEARBORN, Mich., Sept. 14 — The Ford Motor Company agreed Thursday to offer buyouts and other incentives worth as much as $140,000 each to its 75,000 hourly workers in the United States to persuade them to leave their jobs.
The deal with the United Automobile Workers comes after a similar offer at General Motors earlier this year that was accepted by nearly a third of its union workers. It is also the latest sign that Detroit has decided it needs to shrink to survive.
Together, the agreements mean that nearly 200,000 hourly employees in the United States — or three-quarters of those working on the assembly lines of Detroit’s three car companies — have been offered deals to give up their jobs this year. By contrast, nearly 1 million workers were employed by Detroit automakers at their peak in 1978.
The buyout offer has increased the expectation that Ford will announce more plant closings Friday, when it said it would disclose details of the next phase of its sweeping plan to overhaul the company, called the Way Forward.
Any new plant closings would be in addition to earlier plans to shut 14 plants by 2012, a move that will eliminate 30,000 jobs.
Ford may speed up that timetable, and it also is expected to announce further cuts in white-collar and blue-collar jobs, spending cuts and changes in its lineup of car and truck models. In all, Ford has about 110,000 employees in the United States.
Both Ford and G.M. have been hurt by the effect of high gasoline prices that have caused sales of big sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks to slump. These vehicles provide the bulk of their profits.
The two car companies also face stiff competition from Asian automakers, whose reputation for building fuel-efficient small cars is paying off in the face of gas prices that topped $3 a gallon this summer. Companies like Toyota, Honda and Hyundai of Korea have set sales records in the United States as the market share of the three Detroit companies has hit record lows. They also have new plants under construction in the United States, and may build more.
Already, those United States plants operated by foreign automakers employ more than 100,000 workers.
“This more or less convinces auto workers that it’s not just the company, but it’s the domestic car industry,” said Gary N. Chaison, a professor of labor relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. “I don’t think that there’s any autoworker right now that really sees a good future in the auto industry anymore.”
Some high-ranking auto executives are drawing the same conclusion. Even before the revised blueprint for a turnaround was announced, one of its architects said she was leaving the automaker. Anne Stevens, chief operating officer of Ford’s division for the Americas and the highest-ranking woman ever at Ford, said she would retire.
She is the latest in a long line of senior managers who have left Ford over the last several years, as its financial crisis deepened.
Ms. Stevens, 57, has made no secret of her desire to run a company of her own. She apparently lost her chance for further advancement at Ford when the automaker named Alan R. Mulally as its chief executive last week.
Mr. Mulally, a former Boeing executive, is taking on duties performed for the last five years by Ford’s chairman, William Clay Ford Jr., the great-grandson of the company’s founder, Henry Ford. Mr. Ford is keeping the chairman’s title.
Mr. Mulally officially begins his job Oct. 1. He has played no role in devising the cuts or the buyout program, although he has been briefed on the plans and it will be his task to put them into effect.
Ford’s buyout program is similar to, and in some ways more attractive than, the G.M. plan. (Chrysler is not offering buyouts to its workers.)
Like G.M., Ford offered $35,000 to workers who were already eligible to retire. They would be allowed to keep their health care and pension benefits.
Ford workers with at least one year on the job can receive $100,000 to leave. They would receive health care coverage for six months, then would have to purchase medical coverage. They would receive pension benefits once they reached retirement age.
The highest amount is available to workers with 30 years of experience, or those who have reached age 55 with at least 10 years’ experience. They would receive $140,000 to leave immediately, and would keep their pensions, but would have to forfeit their retirement health care coverage.
Ford also was offering packages of education benefits to workers and their families ranging up to $100,000. In all, workers can choose from eight different options.
Martin J. Mulloy, Ford’s vice president for labor affairs, said the agreement was “another example of the way we are working together on business issues to address the needs of our employees and the needs of the company."
Initial reaction by workers was mixed.
Dan Hyatt, a repairman at Ford’s big truck plant in Wayne, Mich., said this afternoon that he was not interested in a buyout, unless Ford closed his plant. “I’ll be here when they lock the doors,” said Mr. Hyatt, a veteran of 15 years at Ford.
But “everybody’s worried,” that the Wayne plant will be among those that will close, he conceded.
Few workers at the Wayne plant were worried about job security during the 1990’s. Then, their factory, known as the Michigan Truck Plant, operated almost continually on overtime, building big sport utility vehicles and pickups, each of which earned Ford a profit of $10,000 and up. With overtime, workers routinely took home $100,000 a year.
But that steady overtime dried up, along with sales of the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator, which have both seen double-digit declines this year. Workers say their hours have been cut back at the plant, even though Ford is about to introduce new versions of both big sport utility vehicles.
The plant faces temporary shutdowns for the rest of the year, part of a wide-ranging series of production cuts that Ford announced last month.
“If they offer something good, I’ll go,” said Donna Armstrong, a Wayne plant worker who has been with Ford for six years. “The future doesn’t look too good.”
Ford has already lost $1.5 billion this year, and internal forecasts show that it could lose as much as $6 billion alone on its North American operations during 2006, according to people with direct knowledge of the reports.
G.M., which lost $10.4 billion last year, has reduced its North American losses in 2006 under a program that calls for it to cut 30,000 jobs and close 11 plants through 2008.
It offered all 113,000 of its workers incentives to leave earlier this year. About 35,000 people, or a third of its work force, agreed to the deals.
That increased pressure on Ford, which was providing buyouts and other incentives on a plant-by-plant basis, to offer a similar program.
In January, Ford said it would cut 30,000 jobs and close 14 plants over the next six years. It had offered buyouts first to that group of workers, but only about 6,000 employees accepted them. Now, facing the likelihood of additional job cuts, Ford is offering buyouts to all of its hourly workers, apparently in the hope that everyone at a plant set to close will accept them.
Otherwise, workers enter a program that guarantees them virtually all their pay plus full benefits for the life of the union’s contract, and they remain on Ford’s payroll until a job opens up. Given that Ford is cutting so many jobs, that is not likely to happen.
Professor Chaison said he expected the buyouts to be received well by workers, just as G.M.’s offers were.
“It’s a dim prospect to remain in the automobile industry,” he said. “For many workers who are either very close to retirement or fairly new, leaving will be seen as the better option.”
Thursday’s agreement was announced by the union in a fax message sent in the early afternoon to leaders of its locals, then posted on the union’s Web site.
“Once again, our members are stepping up to make hard choices under difficult circumstances,” the union’s president, Ron Gettelfinger, said in the statement.
“Now, it’s Ford Motor Company’s responsibility to lead this company in a positive direction — which means using the skills, experience and dedication to quality that U.A.W. members demonstrate every day in order to deliver quality vehicles to customers,” he wrote.
Outside the Wayne plant, Tim Buchman, a 28-year-old line worker, said he would use a buyout to change careers. “I’m taking it,” said Mr. Buchman, who was arriving for the start of the night shift. “It will be worth more for me to take the money and find a new job than to worry about layoffs later.”