DETROIT - Ford Motor Co. has told the United Auto Workers Union that it would offer a buyout package to all of its 75,000 U.S. factory workers as part of an accelerated turnaround plan, a union official said on Thursday.

Ford had taken a more limited, plant-by-plant approach to its attempt to cut 30,000 workers from its payroll by 2012, but expectations had been building over the past month that the No. 2 automaker would follow the successful, company-wide buyout program offered earlier this year by General Motors Corp.

Details of the Ford plan were being readied for distribution to UAW-represented workers at Ford, the official said.

According to CNBC¹s Phil LeBeau, Ford is likely to draw down its blue-collar workforce by about 40 to 45 percent in a restructuring program to be announced tomorrow morning. That¹s about 35,000 of its 75,000 UAW members. Ford will cap the number of people who will take these offers.

The plan is to get as many people as possible to quick leave the company¹s payrolls, said LeBeau.

The automaker said on Thursday that two of its top executives have decided to retire.

Anne Stevens, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the automaker¹s Americas unit, and David Szczupak, group vice president of Manufacturing will retire, the company said.

The news comes a day before the automaker is expected to announce a sweeping restructuring plan.

The long-anticipated restructuring plan announcement, which is expected to include more plant closings and employee layoffs, will be detailed in a statement scheduled to be released at 7 a.m. EDT, the company said. Executives will offer more details in presentations to the media and employees beginning at 9 a.m.

Ford executives are estimating the company could lose up to $9 billion this year including the costs of the restructuring plan, a newspaper reported Thursday.

The Detroit News reported that chief financial officer Don Leclair¹s office has said in a financial forecast report that Ford¹s global automotive operations will post a pretax loss of $5.6 billion to $5.9 billion this year.

Once restructuring costs are factored in, the loss could widen to $9 billion, the newspaper said, citing a senior Ford official who it said had firsthand knowledge of the report. The report said most of the loss would come from Ford¹s North American operations, the newspaper said.

Ford sales have suffered in North America as the auto market shifts away from trucks and truck-based sport utility vehicles and toward more fuel-efficient models often made by Asian automakers.

Ford recently hired Alan Mulally, a former Boeing executive, as its new CEO, replacing Bill Ford Jr., the great-grandson of the company founder, who remains executive chairman of the company.

Company spokeswoman Becky Sanch said Ford would not discuss the report: ³Those aren¹t numbers that we shared, and we¹re not commenting,² she told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The report comes as Ford¹s board of directors was to meet for a second day Thursday to discuss another round of restructuring that likely is to include more plant closures and job cuts.

Ford lost $1.4 billion during the first half of the year and is under pressure from Wall Street to make further cuts and roll out new cars and trucks more quickly.

Separately, a report in Thursday¹s Detroit Free Press says Ford executive Anne Stevens, one of the architects of the initial ³Way Forward² restructuring plan and the highest-ranking woman in the automotive industry will step down.

Stevens has worked at Ford since 1990, and her plan to leave the ailing automaker is one of several crucial pieces in play as a revised rescue mission gets underway for the 103-year-old automaker, the newspaper reported.

In July, the company pledged to accelerate its ³Way Forward² restructuring plan, which when introduced in January called for cutting up to 30,000 jobs and closing 14 facilities by 2012.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.