BY ANDREA HOLECEK, Times of Northwest Indiana
holecek@nwitimes.com
CHICAGO | The Chicago Ford Assembly Plant will be one of the company's nine assembly plants to be partially shut down in the fourth quarter because of poor sales.
The about 2,400 hourly employees of the plant at 130th Street and Torrence Avenue have been told that it tentatively planned to halt production during the week beginning Aug. 28 and tentatively during the first two weeks of October, as well as the weeks beginning on Oct. 30 and Nov. 6.
"We don't know what we're going to do from week to week," said a member of United Autoworkers Local 551 who asked not to be identified. "Things are very uncertain. No one knows what's going on."
Friday, Ford Motor Co. announced that the company is revising it's production schedule, and cutting production 21 percent for the quarter to accelerate its "Way Forward" plan to regenerate the struggling automaker. The added production cuts could mean addition weeks of layoffs for the Chicago plant's workers.
The company said fourth-quarter production would be down 21 percent, or 168,000 units, from last year. Third-quarter production will be 20,000 units below what was previously announced. For 2006, Ford plans to produce about 9 percent fewer vehicles than last year.
The production cuts are to "correct the inventory situation," said company spokesman Oscar Suris. Plants that produce light trucks and SUV's will be affected the most by the cuts, but "because sales have softened a bit as the year progressed the company needs to get production in line with sales," Suris said.
The Chicago Assembly Plant produces the Ford Five Hundred, Ford Freestyle and Mercury Montego. Its employees will be notified of layoffs at "the appropriate time," he said.
The production cuts also will affect Ford's Chicago Heights Stamping Plant, which produces the hoods, floor pans, roofs and body sides for the vehicles the Chicago Assembly Plant produces. The stamping plant also produces body parts for some of the other assembly plants scheduled to production cuts.
"When there is a shut down at the (Chicago) assembly plant, it affects about 50 percent of our volume," said Bill Jackson, president of UAW Local 588 at the stamping plant. "Half of our production people will also be on layoff. There will be a reduction in force by 400 to 500 people."
Currently between 40 and 50 of the stamping plant's workers are on layoff because of production cuts at Ford's Twin Cities, Minn., Assembly Plant, which also is among the nine plants to see shut downs in the fourth quarter."
"We could see more reductions in force depending on when other plants we supply go down," Jackson said, adding the number of workers laid off in his local will depend on the percentage of the stamping plant's production supplied to each assembly plant on layoff.
Bill Ford, the company's chairman and chief executive officer, the company is aware its decision will have a dramatic impact on its employees and suppliers.
"This is, however, the right call for our customers, our dealers and our long-term future," he said in a statement.