Ford's 350,000 employees worldwide, including more than 26,000 in Britain worried about their jobs, are to be offered a computer and the chance to surf the internet from home for a nominal fee.

Amid widespread - and rebutted - fears of imminent plant closures in Europe, including the flagship plant in Dagenham, the world's second-largest car manufacturer said it planned to put its international staff at the cutting edge of e-commerce.

The 26,326 Ford employees in the UK, assuming their plant is still open, can expect to be offered a Hewlett Packard PC, printer and modem for about £3 a month this year.

The package, which they can upgrade at their own expense and allows incidental personal use, is said by Bill Ford, the group's chairman, to be "part of a global strategy to become the world's leading consumer company of automotive products and services".

The programme is to be rolled out from the US in the next 12 months. It is designed to raise the skills of the group's employees when a growing amount of Ford's business, including buying and selling cars, will be done online.

As one employee put it: "The whole world's way of getting information and even talking to each other has changed radically."

Ford, meanwhile, confirmed that its low-margin European operations, including UK plants, are to be subjected to another radical review and cost-cutting in an effort to raise returns from last year's paltry $28m on sales of $30bn.

The UK, with main plants in Dagenham, Bridgend, south Wales, and Halewood, Merseyside, could be the prime target for any closures because of the pound's continuing strength.

The UK operation, threatened by a strike of 3,000 white-collar staff, has been under review for some years. But union leaders yesterday insisted that the productivity record of UK workers merited continuing investment.