By Jeff Tucker, Shelbyville News staff writer
Another 51 union employees will be laid off from Shelbyville's Pilkington North America Co. plant by the end of this month, company officials told workers this week.
Once the cuts are implemented, almost half of the plant's 284 hourly workers that it had four months ago will be gone, union officials said.
Pilkington spokesperson Roberta Stedman said the latest job cuts would be implemented by the end of March and are in response to reductions in orders for automobile parts. She said the hourly employees will be laid off "indefinitely."
"Our customers are the car manufacturers, so when their sales slow down, our volumes get reduced," she said. "The volumes are down, and it's just not here in North America."
Jim Lardin, president of United Steelworkers Union Local 7703, which represents the automobile glass-manufacturing plant at 300 Northridge Drive, said workers were informed by management during shift meetings from Tuesday night through Wednesday night that 51 hourly employees would be laid off by the end of March, as well as 17 ongoing cuts in management positions.
Employees are not being told by the company which of them will stay and which will go.
Instead, seniority will decide.
"People know what their seniority is," Lardin said. "It's a pretty easy math thing to figure out where you are on that list."
An employee who asked not to be identified said morale at the Shelbyville plant is not what it used to be.
"This plant is probably one of the best in the world at what we do," said the veteran employee. "There are a lot of people who are just glad to have a job."
The plant operates four different 12-hour shifts, with each shift having multiple production lines. Three of the five furnace lines will shut down at the end of March, officials said.
The local union does not have an unemployment or emergency stipend fund for displaced workers, Lardin said.
Lardin said the plant's hourly employees, all of whom are Local 7703 members, were not stunned by the latest rounds of cuts at the plant considering the struggling American auto industry.
"Some people anticipated it, some people wished it wasn't going to happen, but everybody can see on the TV how the economy is going and they realized that it's going to affect us because we work in the auto industry and two of our major customers are Chrysler and General Motors (Corp.)," Lardin said.
About half of Pilkington's business is with GM, although it also supplies automotive glass to Chrysler, Toyota, Honda and Nissan.
Lardin said the plant had 284 hourly employees in early November. He said that workforce was reduced by 49 employees at the end of November and another 20 hourly union employees were let go in December.
"It was real obvious last November that it's hitting us and it's just not rumor anymore," he said.