Ford has announced plans to temporarily shut down the Michigan Truck Plant in Wayne that currently produces the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator SUVs.
The plant is going to close on June 23rd and not reopen until August 25th. Expedition sales were off 31 percent in the first five months of the year and the Navigator's sales are off 22 percent.
The factory currently has 1,400 employees. The employees will get 95 percent of their pay during the time that the plant is closed.
Full Story: MSNBC
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Comments (16)
Gee, 95% for doing nothing, no wonder American car makers are loosing money.
Posted by harryo | June 17, 2008 6:04 PM
Posted on June 17, 2008 18:04
United States car makers... down
Honda/Toyota... up... hehe at last, people is noticing how real cars should be.
Posted by pablo S | June 17, 2008 6:38 PM
Posted on June 17, 2008 18:38
loose!=lose
Posted by Jung | June 17, 2008 7:51 PM
Posted on June 17, 2008 19:51
Yeah, sign me up for a poorly constructed gas guzzler so I can support lazy Americans who get paid not to work.
Posted by Tommy Boy | June 17, 2008 10:35 PM
Posted on June 17, 2008 22:35
For some reason I highly doubt this is going to be a temporary shutdown. My guess is it will stay down until it's retooled to produce something that will sell (ie. NOT A 3-ton SUV).
Posted by Noya | June 17, 2008 11:51 PM
Posted on June 17, 2008 23:51
Paid vacation for 1400 employees for 9 weeks? If rising gas prices don't kill off these companies, the unions will.
Posted by Jim | June 18, 2008 12:42 AM
Posted on June 18, 2008 00:42
I wish I worked there.
Posted by Alex | June 18, 2008 2:50 AM
Posted on June 18, 2008 02:50
I wish I worked there too. Union job, being paid 5x what I should be not to work, and then if sales slow they idle the plant, sweet!
Posted by Jake | June 18, 2008 5:08 AM
Posted on June 18, 2008 05:08
It's so easy to hate on unions. I love american cars, but refuse to buy them because I don't want to support UAW labor.
1400workers*75$an hr*95%*9 weeks*40hrs a week = $35,910,000 in labor costs to produce NOTHING.
"The average UAW worker with a high school degree earns 57.6% more compensation than the average university professor with a Ph.D. (see graph above, click to enlarge), and 52.6% more than the average worker at Toyota, Honda or Nissan."
Average "total compensation package" for a UAW employee is ~150k a year. Starting pay is roughly $27 an hour.
Posted by CCL | June 18, 2008 7:40 AM
Posted on June 18, 2008 07:40
can you say "soup kitchen?"
or can you say will "work for food?"
how about "can you spare some change, i need to take the bus to a job interview"
Posted by dennisil | June 18, 2008 1:23 PM
Posted on June 18, 2008 13:23
I have worked in both union and non-union environments. However, I do feel that the UAW's contract stranglehold is killing American car companies. I know that they have made concessions recently and lousy management of the Big Three is contributory to their woes. I also know that an assembly line job is tedious, difficult, and of lately uncertain. But, if the US auto industry is to remain competitive and to keep these jobs stateside they need to get wages in line with the non union plants in the States. I do not like to tell someone what he/she should make, but the choice is theirs. Either make alot in the short term and watch your job disappear or take a concession and potentially keep the job and maybe be a part of profit sharing in the future. Not an easy choice, but becoming necessary now in these uncertain times.
Posted by longdxcommuter | June 18, 2008 2:01 PM
Posted on June 18, 2008 14:01
I guess plants often get closed in the summer for retooling, but this is longer than usual so who knows what's going on there. All I know is that I want a 2 month paid vacation. I'd just get a temp job for the summer and bring in 2 incomes.
Posted by gm0n3y | June 18, 2008 3:45 PM
Posted on June 18, 2008 15:45
While we're complaining about all those high paid union guys, why not fire all those lazy assholes working at Mc Donalds and Walmart. Don't you guys know we could import hundreds of people from India and Malaysia and get our burgers and Chinese apliances a hell of a lot cheaper than we are know paying. As a matter of fact, every person working in America could be replaced by some one who would work for less. Just think how cheap things would be.
Posted by Bill | June 18, 2008 7:43 PM
Posted on June 18, 2008 19:43
Okay, you convinced me. Every American should earn what they think they're worth.
Posted by Tommy Boy | June 18, 2008 11:50 PM
Posted on June 18, 2008 23:50
@Tommy Boy,
I subscribe to your idea. Now I don't work very hard, but I still think I'm worth probably $150k a year. And if I work hard or do any overtime (which I don't get paid for now), I want double time. Maybe I should just up my initial figure to $400k since the economy will tank about 6 months after this policy goes into effect.
Posted by gm0n3y | June 19, 2008 11:26 AM
Posted on June 19, 2008 11:26
Don't blame the unions. They didn't design those cars. If anyone deserves two months without pay, it should be the execs who insisted that they continue to push SUV's even when gas prices were going through the roof. They are the ones deciding on which cars to sell. They are the ones that didn't put the engineering resources into making their product reliable. The executives are making 100+ times as much as the average worker.
It's not the American worker that's to blame for the quality of the Detroit automaker. American workers are creating Hondas and Toyotas. It's the executives that are killing them. You can't blame the workers in the original design is crap.
Posted by Nate | June 20, 2008 8:01 AM
Posted on June 20, 2008 08:01