Furlough affects assembly line at Kokomo Transmission Plant

Workers on one assembly line at the Kokomo Transmission Plant are on furlough this week, according to Rich Boruff, president of United Auto Workers Local 685.

He added that last week two assembly lines were down at KTP and one line was down at Indiana Transmission Plant 2.

"The people we supply transmissions to was down," Boruff said of the furloughs. "I'm not sure they will return to work next week."

A union member at UAW Local 1166 said there were furloughs at all four plants in Kokomo.

Max Gates, a spokesman for Chrysler, said he is not hearing of any furloughs in Kokomo over the next few weeks.

Gates said ITP II was down last week and that both ITP I and II are running all lines this week.

Chrysler employs approximately 6,000 people at the three Kokomo transmission plants and the casting plants.

Chrysler furloughed all the production workers in Kokomo from Dec. 19 through Jan. 20 or Jan. 26 to reduce the inventory in dealerships across the country.

About 1,500 employees in ITP I and II were furloughed the last week of November because of sagging sales by the automaker.