Ford offering work-from-home option to 30,000 employees

Ford Motor Co. is allowing tens of thousands of employees to continue working from home indefinitely, underlining the impact of the coronavirus on employment practices at some of America's largest companies.

About 30,000 employees of the automaker who were shifted to remote work during the pandemic can carry on in those roles for the foreseeable future, Ford told CBS MoneyWatch. The remote option, announced to employees last week during a staff meeting, only applies to salaried office workers, not manufacturing jobs at auto plants.  Ford has 186,000 employees worldwide with 30,000 of them in white-collar or managerial roles in areas such as human resources, information technology and accounting. The company employs another 56,000 hourly workers in U.S. factories and maintains 65 manufacturing plants worldwide.