Thursday, February 28, 2008
Volvo says it will start limited production
A union official dismisses that as unlikely because of the tiny work force because of the strike.
The latest from The Ticker blog
Officials at Volvo Trucks North America said Wednesday it is resuming limited production of big-rig trucks at its Dublin factory.
A spokesman for striking Volvo workers dismissed the company's claim as far-fetched.
Not only is the plant producing a limited supply of new trucks, but it is also exploring all options to resume full production without its unionized work force, which is on strike, Volvo President and Chief Executive Officer Per Carlsson said in an employee memo released to the media.
But Lester Hancock, president of Local 2069 of United Auto Workers, said he believes the available work force inside the factory includes only 17 production workers, while 2,600 are on strike.
Hancock said Volvo will find it difficult to produce more than a few trucks a week with a crew that size, even if supplemented by salaried personnel as the company said it is doing.
And if the crew manages to produce a truck and sell it, Hancock said he "wouldn't want to be that customer."
The company said it is training nonassembly personnel in assembly methods to bolster the production capability. In addition, experienced quality control personnel are checking vehicles as they completed before shipment to dealers. About 300 people are working in the plant daily, it said.
Hancock expressed disbelief. He said the plant's normal daily output is 145 trucks through the combined efforts of 2,600 to 2,700 people.
"If you do the math, 17 people are probably not going to get one truck a week or three trucks a week at most," Hancock said.
Building a big rig involves "thousands of tasks," he emphasized. "With 17 people in there, it ain't going to happen."
Company spokesman John Mies said the production rate when the UAW went on strike Feb. 1 was slightly more than 100 trucks a day.
During roughly the first two weeks of the strike, the available labor force completed 180 already assembled trucks, and they were delivered to dealers.
Last week, the available labor force finished 46 additional trucks that were on the assembly line when the strike began, Mies said.
This week, the production line will resume operation on an intermittent basis "with an ambitious goal of ramping up to about 24 units per day over the next few weeks," the Carlsson letter said.
Hancock disagreed further. He said there weren't 180 assembled trucks awaiting completion when the strike began. Nor were there 46 trucks on the assembly line needing further attention.
Not only that, Hancock contends that the company's claim that it has shipped completed trucks is false because, he said, not a single completed truck has left the plant during the strike.
That said, negotiators for the union and company were looking Wednesday for a spot to resume talks for the first time since the strike began, Hancock said.
He said a suitable spot would probably be a hotel with sufficient room for multiple tables and accommodations for the negotiators.
The last time the two sides talked, it was at a Hilton in Charlotte, N.C., Hancock said. Asked to describe the setting, he said, "We had four different tables going at one time."
