DETROIT – For Ford Motor Co.’s beleaguered white-collar employees, Friday’s announcement of more major job cuts to come deepens the uncertainty they’ve come to live with.

“I think there’s still a lot of denial,” said one Ford engineer who asked not to be identified to protect his job. “And of course this is bigger than everybody expected. This is huge. One of every three people! So there’s a lot of anxiety, a lot of concern.”

Some white-collar employees were more optimistic.

Bill Toth, 41, of Ypsilanti, Mich., a seven-year Ford salaried worker in the plastic shop in Dearborn, predicted better times ahead. “I think we’re going to be busier than before,” Toth said. “We might be OK.”

Mike Boland, 59, of Ann Arbor, a 30-year veteran of Ford Credit, said the department was cushioned from the impact of Friday’s announcement. “The dealerships will still require financing,” he said.

Ford’s Way Forward plan is just the latest blow to a white-collar work force already battered by several years of unrest.

Walt Cuppetelli , a white-collar maintenance supervisor who retired a year ago from Ford’s transmission plant in Sterling Heights, said Friday that morale remains “horrible … absolutely horrible,” but that the pending elimination of another 10,000 white-collar jobs by late 2007 is only part of the reason.

Many white-collar supervisors have nurtured resentment for years that production workers represented by the UAW sometimes get benefits, overtime pay and job protections not available to non-union supervisors.

“You’re an at-will employee, so anybody can come in at anytime and say, “Sorry, we don’t need your services anymore, adios,”‘ Cuppetelli said Friday.

Moreover, many white-collar workers, particularly those over 40, felt targeted under a divisive employee evaluation plan launched by Ford’s then-CEO Jacques Nasser in 1999, in which 10 percent of white-collar managers were denied raises and faced possible dismissal. After a storm of protest including two class-action lawsuits, the company dropped the controversial plan.

As a result of these and other issues, morale among white-collar workers was suffering even before Friday’s announcement.

“These are endemic problems that took several years to get where it did today,” Cuppetelli said Friday.

The engineer quoted at the beginning of this article who asked not to be named said the biggest result of Friday’s announcement could be an erosion of confidence in company leaders, including Chairman Bill Ford.

“The first time, he didn’t do it right. They promised this, they promised that, and then they’re doing it again. You start to question how much confidence you have with what they say they’re going to do.”

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(Detroit Free Press correspondent Ruby Bailey contributed to this report.)

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(c) 2006, Detroit Free Press.

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AP-NY-09-15-06 1929EDT