FCA Tipton Transmission Plant on Monday March 5, 2020. During this last week of March the plant is shut down amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Staff photo by Tim Bath
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles announced Tuesday it is reevaluating its plans to resume manufacturing operations in the U.S. and will no longer begin progressively restarting facilities on May 4.
The company said the decision was made “in light of the updated state stay in place orders” and will “communicate new restart dates in due course.”
Rick Ward, president of United Auto Workers 685, which represents the plants in Kokomo and Tipton, said he wasn’t surprised by the news, considering Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer hasn’t allowed the auto plants there to reopen.
“If they’re not building in the assembly plants in Michigan, there’s no sense in us building here,” Ward said.
Whitmer said Monday she is taking a “hard look” at whether to let industrial sectors like manufacturing reopen in Michigan in the next phase of loosening her stay-at-home restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic.
FCA’s move to push back its restart date comes after UAW President Rory Gamble said Monday it was “simply too risky to consider an early May restart.”
“Our concern here, first and foremost, is for the safety of our members and their families,” he said in a release. “And that will be the determining factor in when we feel it is safe to reopen these facilities. We will not move on this point.”
The FCA plants in Kokomo and Tipton closed on March 18 after all of Detroit’s Big Three automakers agreed to temporarily shut down operations at all North American factories due to worker fears about the coronavirus.
Ward said the local UAW membership was ready to get back to work, but employees are willing to wait in order to ensure a safe environment once they return to the plants.
“We’ve still got a ways to go on figuring out how we’re going to get people in and out of the plants while making sure everything is safe,” he said. “We want to make sure that everything that we can possibly make safe is safe. We can’t take a chance with our membership.”
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that FCA, General Motors and Ford Motor were all targeting May 18 to resume some production at their U.S. factories, citing people familiar with the plans. FCA did not confirm that date with the Tribune, and said it is “revaluating our restart time.”
The company has already announced new safety protocols for whenever workers do return, including requiring employees to take their temperature every day, two-hours prior to coming to work, wearing masks, social distancing and filling out a health-screening questionnaire every day.
Ward said the new safety procedures may remain in place “for quite some time” over concerns about a second wave of the virus hitting later this year.
“It’s going to be a change, but we’re still going to build the best transmissions ever,” he said.
FCA said it is continuing to work to implement safety measures across its North American operations based on best practices and recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.
“It is important that our employees feel confident that all precautions have been taken to ensure our facilities are safe, secure and sanitized when production resumes,” the company said.
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