Goodyear off for holidays

The Fayetteville Observer, December 9, 2008

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. will take a break from production at its Fayetteville plant between Dec. 24 and Jan. 2.

“We’ve known it was coming,” said Daryl Jackson, president of United Steelworkers Local 959. The official announcement happened Friday, he added.

This will be the fifth week of production halts this year.

Richard Evans, spokesman for the plant on Ramsey Street that employs about 3,000 people, said production will stop at 7 a.m. on Dec. 24 and resume at 7 a.m. on Jan 2.

Because employees will be paid for the Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays, they won’t be off the clock long enough to qualify for unemployment claims, Jackson said. During previous production halts this year, workers were able to collect unemployment.

If there is money in the “sub-pay” trust fund, which is contracted between the company and United Steelworkers, it will be made available, Jackson said.

Given the dire situation with the economy and Detroit automakers, union members are generally relieved that they didn’t end up taking more time off than this, Jackson said.

“It’s like I told the membership — with the Big Three in the shape that they’re in, we’re fortunate that we’re 99.9 percent in the replacement market,” Jackson said. Plants dealing in original equipment — tires that go on new cars — are in a far worse position, he said.

Plant officials have said that the four prior weeks of production halts this year were to bring inventory in line with demand.

That’s partly the reason again.

“But this is more of a standard practice at the end of the year,” Evans said. “We’ve done this a number of times.”

During a conference call with investors last month, Goodyear officials told analysts that additional production halts were likely.

“As we continue to manage to the current market conditions, we’ll accelerate our action under our ‘cash is king’ strategy,” Robert J. Keegan, Goodyear’s chairman and chief executive officer, told investors at that time. “We will manage aggressively for cash.”

Part of that means making necessary production cutbacks, said Keegan, who added that demand indicators point to a continued “challenging” environment at least through the middle of 2009.