To contribute to our goal of reducing annual North America operating costs by about $5 billion by the end of 2008 as compared with 2005, over the last two years we have reduced by about 46,300 the employment levels in our Ford North America business unit. At December 31, 2007, our Ford North America business unit had approximately 23,700 salaried employees and 64,000 hourly employees (including 6,100 working at our Automotive Component Holdings (ACH) facilities), compared with approximately 34,500 salaried employees and 99,500 hourly employees (including 13,900 working at our ACH facilities) at December 31, 2005. Most of these reductions were the result of offers of early retirement or voluntary separation packages to U.S. employees, including Ford employees at our ACH plants.

Although we have achieved our previously announced goal to operate with between 55,000 and 60,000 hourly non-ACH employees in North America by the end of 2008, we have embarked on additional personnel reduction actions, as announced on January 24, 2008, to achieve even lower hourly employment levels in North America. With the UAW, we have implemented an additional enterprise-wide buyout program in two phases:

• The first phase was applicable to UAW-represented hourly employees at select closed facilities (i.e., the Maumee Stamping Plant, and the Atlanta, St. Louis, Edison (NJ) and Norfolk Assembly Plants), with buyout offers extended from January 22, 2008 to February 25, 2008. Employees who accept these offers generally were separated by March 1, 2008.
• The second phase was applicable to all other UAW-represented hourly employees, with buyout offers being made from February 19, 2008 to March 18, 2008. Employees who accepted these offers began to leave the Company beginning April 1, 2008. Most separations are to be completed by June 30, 2008 and all will be completed by year-end 2008.