Expert says Ford Motor Co layoffs are nothing to worried for

Ford Motor Co. is urging thousands of employees to walk away.

The company has started offering buyouts to salaried workers.

Talk of buyouts makes people scared and nervous, but one automotive expert says in this situation there is nothing to be worry about.

Ford announced plans to offer buy-outs to 15,000 salaried employees in North America and Asia.

"These buyouts are targeted toward people in marketing, in sales, in legal, and those kinds of professions," said Jeff Gilbert, WWJ 950 reporter and automotive industry expert. "They're not allowing products in product development, technology, developing self-driving cars, areas where it's hard to find people."

With the voluntary buy-outs, Ford hopes to reduce the number of global white collar employees by 1,400.

"It is not a large number and looking at the overall head count of Ford, they're talk about cutting 1,400 jobs but they're adding in some many other areas it's probably going to be close to a wash," Gilbert said.

While the mere mention of buy-outs can trigger fear, Gilbert says in this case there's nothing to worry about.

"As we went through the recession and saw buy-outs followed by layoffs and (that's not ) what we're seeing," he said. "This is a tweak along the road as Ford takes a look at the future strategy and says we don't need as many people in this area. we need them more in the other area."

As far as money goes the buy-outs could go anywhere from three months paid to all the way 18 months paid, full salary, depending on how long the employee has been with Ford as well as other factors.

Also, this was well in the works before Ford announced the new CEO Jim Hackett.