I too feel bad for those impacted, but at the same time, sometimes a company needs to shrink to be able to grow. I'd rather see a company like Ford who makes some tough decisions, than see what happened with GM and let things get to the point where it required government bailouts.
I'll take my chances with capitalism
I'm not saying do away with capitalism.
Would it be better to keep everyone employed at the peril of the success of the entire organization? Is that a more responsible decision? Sometimes the herd needs to be trimmed so that the herd as a whole can become stronger.
There is no peril of the entire organization. Ford has a fat profit margin and overall still improves as a business. Everyone in the auto industry knows about the upcoming retirement exodus, forcing the majority of them to go first and cutting some other people to try to look "better" to shareholders is just poor showing of commitment to their engineers. Especially when the CEO received a 19% raise, which is equivalent to ~$3.65 million. Or 48 workers. With no pension or anything of that nature being offered to Ford engineers, I wouldn't be surprised to see a high turnover rate in the next 5 years or so with actions like this. With that comes lost experience to the company and retraining of fresh workers (meaning poor quality for their first 1-2 years of work).
the bailouts were not so long ago that we can say "there is no peril" as if we cannot remember how close things got to the end for the big 3. The Bailout is exactly what happens when you stop listening to consumers and shareholders in favor of doing what's easy and profitable
Shareholders do not represent when a company is actually going bankrupt. The stock market is the representation of what the shareholders think a company is worth. I.e. Tesla. Tesla does not have the liquid equity to compare to GM or Ford or even Chrysler. Tesla does not have the profits, or sales to compare. What it has is market capitalization which is again, based off what shareholders think.
I am very aware of market cap and how it works, but the implication that it is not one of the meaningful criteria with which to judge an organizations overall health i believe is inaccurate. Comparing to Tesla is an easy comparison because it is such a drastic example with such a high market cap despite such low sales/profit and assets, but Tesla is functioning less like an automotive company and more as a tech which as many know are highly speculative. If you made a comparison between more standard automotive entities, Ford/Toyota/VW/GM, you would see that market cap provides a very well rounded view of the market valuation of the organizations.
