ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, August 31, 1996 TAG: 9609030027
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: DUBLIN
SOURCE: MARK CLOTHIER STAFF WRITER
About 140 workers - nearly 10 percent of the work force - will be laid off from Volvo GM Heavy Truck Corp.'s Dublin plant by year's end, the company announced Friday.
From 50 to 75 hourly employees will be laid off by Sept. 20. Some 50 to 60 salaried employees will lose their jobs by Dec. 31, said Reeder Singler, Volvo GM's manager of human resources. Similar reductions are slated for the company's Orrville, Ohio, plant.
The news comes some seven months after the layoff of 190 employees at the Dublin plant, one of the New River Valley's largest employers. Forty-one of those laid-off employees have since been brought back.
Singler said the move is needed because production has dropped significantly. Company, union and trucking industry officials hope the just-launched VN Series truck will boost sagging sales.
But the company told employees that if sales don't rebound, more layoffs could be in the offing.
The 1,400-employee plant produces about 56 heavy trucks a day. The number of rigs is expected to drop to 40 after the first layoffs take effect, said United Auto Workers Local 2069 President John Sayers. This time last year the Dublin plant produced 80 trucks daily.
"As we increase product," Sayers said, "hopefully, we can get the employees back shortly."
The total number of laid-off workers at the Dublin plant - as of Sept. 20 - would be about 200.
"Our people are still in good spirits," Sayers said. "No one likes layoffs but trucking is an up and down industry and right now we're just in a downturn - we're all in a downturn."
Although most companies in the industry have laid off workers, Volvo GM has taken the turn harder than others, according to Andrew Ryder, editor of Heavy Duty Trucking magazine.
While the heavy-duty trucking industry in general saw a 15 percent sales decline through June from a record-setting 1995, Volvo GM's July sales dropped 46 percent, Ryder said.
The decline has pushed Volvo GM from No. 3 in the industry to No. 6, behind Navistar International Corp., Freightliner Corp., Mack Truck, Peterbilt Trucks and Kenworth Trucks, Ryder said.
"So yeah, some of Volvo GM's situation is because of the industry downturn, but some of it may be linked to company performance as well," he said.
At the UAW local headquarters, located across Cougar Trail Road from the plant, Robbie Wyrick and Bill Burton - the local's two-man education committee - were preparing an information packet Friday afternoon for those workers who may be laid off.
"We do it so they don't feel the company didn't just cut them loose and we didn't care," Wyrick said.
Both men said workers at the plant had expected layoffs of some sort, but Friday's news - just three days before Labor Day - caught people by surprise.
Included in the union's benefits package are supplemental unemployment payments. The feature can give a laid-off worker 95 percent of his or her pay for as long as three months minus taxes and unemployment.
Wyrick said most of the laid-off hourly workers earn the base assembly worker starting pay of $15.78 an hour. Supplemental unemployment should give them about $275 plus regular unemployment insurance. The union's supplemental funds typical last only a few months, he said.
Wyrick, 40, hooks up air-conditioning lines at the plant across the street. He's worked at Volvo for almost nine years and in manufacturing for 20 years. He estimates he's been laid off four or five times, including a 15-month layoff in 1990. Layoffs, he said, are always in the back of a union worker's mind.
It's a little closer to the forefront of Burton's mind. Employed at Volvo GM since July 1993, Burton, 38, is a few months shy of the expected seniority cutoff point. Workers hired after August 1993 are most likely to be the ones laid off.
"Nothing's guaranteed in manufacturing anymore," Burton said. "It's up and down and I've always been lucky and I've had good union jobs."
"The worst impact is the ripple-down, it effects the whole area," Wyrick said. "We've got good wages, good support but some of these smaller companies might have layoffs and they're non-union with smaller wages."
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines KEYWORDS: JOBCHEKby CNB