GM could fire striking workers at India plant

Tuesday, Mar 29th, 2011 @ 2:16 p.m.

A nearly two-week long strike at General Motors’ Halol, India, assembly plant has motivated the automaker to hire a new temporary staff and to issue an ultimatum to striking workers.

About 250 of GM’s 900 workers went on strike on March 16. As a result, production dropped from 100 vehicles per shift to 70.

“Workers cannot earn their wages at the cost of their lives – they are popping pain-killers owing to workload,” said the workers union’s general secretary, Nihil Mehta. The union argues that GM increased production from 176 to 208 units daily without a commensurate increase in pay.

GM says that it gave the workers until March 25 to show up for work. Now, the automaker says it is looking into the legality of letting the 250 striking workers go.

To temporarily stave off a product drought, GM has hired enough temporary staff to bring production back up to speed.

“We have started hiring people and production of vehicles is going up,” GM India Vice President P. Balendran told Indian media. The automaker builds a variety of Chevrolet products primarily aimed at the fast-growing Indian market in Halol.

GM says that the strike has cost the company 850 vehicles, but the new temporary hires have helped increase production.

References
1.’General Motors India…’ view
1.’Halol strike: GM’s…’ view

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UAW could accept pay cuts if GM reopens idled Wis., Tenn. plants

Tuesday, Mar 29th, 2011 @ 6:17 p.m.

United Auto Workers Vice President Joe Ashton told reporters today that the union would be open to negotiating lower pay levels if General Motors restored its idled assembly plants in Janesville, Wisconsin, and Spring Hill, Tennessee.

“We will look at anything when it comes to negotiations that will retain jobs,” Ashton told reporters gathered today at a GM plant in Orion Township, Michigan. Ashton said that the UAW would consider letting GM pay entry-level wages to workers if it reopened the plants.

Ashton was at the Orion plant to tout the UAW’s agreement to a two-tier wage system that GM says will allow it to build small cars at a profit in the U.S. As a result, GM will be the only automaker to build a subcompact vehicle – the Chevrolet Sonic – in the United States. Subcompacts don’t offer automakers much profit margin compared to larger, more expensive vehicles.

Ashton said that he believes it is likely that GM will seek to reopen the two plants it shuttered in 2008, but a GM spokesperson suggested otherwise.

“There is no product demand for them to fulfill right now,” GM VP of Labor Relations, Cathy Clegg, said. “Absolutely we would like to be able to have demand for our products such that we would be able to turn those plants back on.”

Clegg reiterated that GM still plans to shut down its Shreveport, Louisiana, plant in 2012, when it phases out the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon pickup trucks.

“We differ on Shreveport,” Ashton said, stating that he doesn’t think GM will reopen it. “But we still feel GM has an obligation to those employees. If there’s something we can put in that facility, then it should be put in there.”

GM’s Janesville Assembly once built the automaker’s GMT900 full-size SUVs (Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban, among others), but the automaker chose to consolidate production at its Arlington, Texas, plant. In Spring Hill, GM still builds engines, but its vehicle assembly facility is inactive. Opened to much fanfare in the early 1990s, it once served as the exclusive Saturn plant before building various GM crossovers before GM moved some production to Mexico (Saturn Vue) and Michigan (Chevrolet Traverse).

References
1.’UAW vying for…’ view

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Report: March sales could increase 9 percent

Thursday, Mar 24th, 2011 @ 10:13 a.m.

Despite some uneasy market conditions, March could see a near double-digit sales growth. The latest report predicts 1.2 million light vehicles will be sold during the month of March, representing a 9 percent increase over the same month last year.

According to J.D Power and Associates’ monthly report, sales are trending upward in March, likely to result in total light vehicle sales of 1.2 million units. Of those sales, 991,900 are expected to be retail sales, translating to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 10.9 million units.

Additionally, J.D. Power raised its first quarter forecast to 10.7 million vehicles, up from 10.6 million. Total sales for 2011 could hit 13 million units, which would be an increase of 13 percent from 2010.

“With all the dynamic variables kind of interplaying out there right now, we still are seeing strong sales,” said Jeff Schuster, executive director of global forecasting at J.D. Power and Associates.

“We’re also seeing that the likelihood of some inventory shortages is actually causing buyers to maybe push up their purchase decisions to hit the dealerships now while there still is inventory on some of the models that may be in short supply, so March could be getting a boost from that as well.”

However, those same inventory concerns could limit growth during the month of April.

References
1.’J.D. Power: March…’ view

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Toyota might idle Texas plant; German automakers could be next

Thursday, Mar 24th, 2011 @ 3:14 p.m.

That the massive earthquake that rocked Northern Japan earlier this month could have global ramifications is hardly surprising – especially after news today could Toyota will temporarily idle its San Antonio, Texas, assembly plant and that German automakers and suppliers are considering cutting production.

The production cuts come due to difficulty acquiring Japanese-made goods.

“We are informing our team members that, with the situation over in Japan, it is likely that we will see some nonproduction days coming,” Toyota plant spokesman Craig Mullenbach told members of the media.

Toyota builds its Tundra and Tacoma pickup trucks in San Antonio.

Meanwhile, the situation in Germany, where numerous vehicles and components are assembled, is also worsening.

“We have received inquiries mainly from western Germany, from companies that are signalling that they could face problems because their inventories could slowly start running out,” a spokeswoman for Germany’s Federal Labor Office told Reuters today.

Robert Bosch, one of the world’s largest automotive suppliers, says that it has inventory for at least the next week to ten days, but the firm says it could run low on parts shortly thereafter if production is not able to resume in Japan. Although Bosch is a German firm, the company supplies parts for every major automaker across the globe and it has assembly plants in Japan.

References
1.’Toyota Texas plant…’ view
2.’Japan quake sees…’ view

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