As many as 733 temporary workers at BMW’s Greer plant will be laid off in December as the German automaker begins to feel the effects of the world financial crisis.
Job reductions at the plant that is a powerful economic engine sustaining thousands of jobs in the Upstate and across South Carolina are limited for now to temporary workers the plant employs through the MAU Inc. staffing company.
The plant has a permanent work force of about 5,400 BMW-hired workers, in addition to hundreds of contract and contingent employees.
Those jobs have a potent multiplier effect. An estimated 23,000 jobs have been created through a network of companies in the Upstate that supply the automotive parts and services. How this reduction could play out through that network was unclear late Thursday.
The company said, however, it remains focused on its planned expansion of the plant, which now makes the X3, X5 and X6 models. It plans to launch a diesel-power X5 this year and a hybrid X6 next year.
Bobby Hitt, a spokesman for BMW, said the company “is not unlike any other manufacturing facility in that it is not immune to uncertain circumstances that we are all witnessing in the economy and, more specifically, the automotive industry.”
The layoffs come after a drop in BMW’s U.S. sales in September. Sales of BMW-branded vehicles plunged nearly 30 percent, compared to the same month last year, the company said. Counting Mini-brand vehicles, the sales drop was 25.8 percent.
General Motors Corp. will lay off about 1,600 hourly workers at assembly plants in Detroit, Pontiac and Wilmington, Del., as it responds to decreasing demand for trucks, large cars and luxury cars, the company said today.
The company will lay off 500 workers at its Detroit Hamtramck Assembly plant on Dec. 23 due to reduced demand for the Buick Lucerne and Cadillac DTS, the company reported to the state today.
GM Spokesman Tony Sapienza said the Detroit Hamtramck layoffs are effective Jan. 12.
It will lay off 700 workers at GM’s Pontiac truck assembly, where it assembles the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups beginning Feb. 1.
The automaker will lay off 400 workers at its Wilmington, Del., assembly plant beginning Dec. 8. The Wilmington plant assembles the Saturn Sky, Pontiac Solstice and Opel GT roadsters.
GM spokeswoman Sherrie Childers Arb said the layoffs in Detroit and Pontiac are the result of planned line-speed reductions. The action at Wilmington, she said, is the result of plans to reduce production from two shifts to one.
General Motors Corp. says it has notified several employment agencies that it intends to cut contract jobs as it continues to shrink its work force to match lower U.S. sales.
GM spokesman Dan Flores wouldn’t say how many contract workers would be cut. He says the cuts began in March and will be made across GM’s U.S. facilities.
The cuts come as part of GM’s plan to reduce its U.S. white-collar costs by more than 20%. The company had about 32,000 salaried workers in the U.S. at the end of last year.
GM has been cutting vehicle production as its sales have slumped. It plans to close four pickup and SUV plants and says it is working on further cuts at stamping and powertrain factories. Continue reading →
With Chrysler LLC’s announcement last week of an additional 12,000 job cuts, the number of jobs to be eliminated from U.S. and Canadian automakers and their former parts arms in the second half of this decade has grown to 150,000 — and counting.
With buyouts or early retirement offers expected at all three Detroit automakers in the wake of new UAW contracts that allow new hires to get less in pay or benefits, the number is sure to grow soon.
And in the future, as the American automakers face competition from more and more rivals from low-cost countries, analysts say, more painful cuts will almost certainly follow. Just days after hourly workers ratified a new labor contract, Chrysler said it plans to nearly double the 13,000 job cuts it announced in February, now targeting the elimination of more than 25,000 hourly and salaried workers, or nearly one-third of its workforce.
Add the Chrysler cuts to the expected job cuts — at least 137,400 of them — already in the works at General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and its ACH unit, and Delphi Corp. between 2005 and 2009, and the total American job reductions rise to about 150,000. The total, derived from an analysis by the Center for Automotive Research earlier this year and subsequent company announcements, includes the 34,410 hourly buyouts and retirements at GM last year, and the more than 30,000 jobs eliminated at Ford since 2005 and the planned shutdowns and sell-offs of 35 Delphi and ACH plants.
That doesn’t include the thousands of jobs lost at other auto suppliers affected by the downsizing. And still, analysts, union officials and autoworkers say the pain isn’t over.
“We’ve been overbuilding for years and years, and now it’s catching up to us because we’re losing market share,” said Kenyon Hall, a 31-year-old assembly worker at Chrysler’s plant in Belvedere, Ill., where the automaker plans to eliminate a shift. “They waited too long to do something. Now it’s going to be painful for a while.”
Analysts expect that even the latest restructurings leave Detroit automakers larger than they will need to be in future. Continue reading →
DETROIT — Michigan’s troubled economy is taking another unwelcome hit as Chrysler LLC slashes as many as 12,100 jobs and eliminates four vehicle models.
The Auburn Hills-based automaker said Thursday that between 8,500 and 10,000 hourly jobs, 1,000 salaried jobs and about 1,100 contract positions would be cut through 2008.
“This is a shockingly big announcement. It’s not a good sign for Michigan,” said Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor.
McAlinden said Michigan will lose 5,000 hourly jobs and most of the 2,000 salaried and contract jobs in Chrysler’s latest downsizing.
Michigan has lost 285,000 net jobs since 2000, mainly because of the shrinking auto industry. The state has the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 7.5 percent.
“It’s not inconceivable that you could have a whole decade of (net) job losses in the state,” said University of Michigan economist Don Grimes.
Chrysler said it will stop building the Dodge Magnum, the convertible version of the Chrysler PT Cruiser, the Chrysler Pacifica and the Chrysler Crossfire by next year. None of those vehicles is built in Michigan.
Along with the discontinued models, the automaker said it is eliminating production shifts at five assembly plants, including second shifts at the Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit and the Sterling Heights Assembly Plant. Shifts at both plants will be eliminated in the first quarter of 2008.
Each assembly plant shift employs roughly 1,000 workers. Chrysler said it expects to restore a second shift at Jefferson North in 2010 when it introduces two new sport-utility vehicles.
