As COVID-19 death toll mounts, when to reopen North American plants?

DETROIT — Whenever Fiat Chrysler Automobiles restarts North America production, the UAW members working the lines will have to cope with the grim reality that COVID-19 has claimed the lives of several colleagues. 

While it hasn’t been reported that an autoworker is among the dead in Ontario, Unifor is skeptical about a quick return to work.

The rising U.S. death count from the global coronavirus pandemic is personal for UAW members now. It includes familiar faces who walked the same halls and toiled on the same factory floors they did.

Clocking in won't be the same for Aric Holloway, a longtime worker at FCA's Warren Truck Assembly Plant north of Detroit. A co-worker who would greet people at the door died Wednesday, March 25.

"He would usually be there in the morning when you come in the front door, shaking your hand and telling you, 'Thanks for coming to work.' It was a joke that we" had, Holloway told Automotive News. "He would be in front of the plant every morning."

These deaths loom as automakers plot their courses of action. Mid-April appears to be the earliest that most North America production could come back on line. Ford Motor Co. last week said it planned to restart operations April 6 at one assembly plant in Mexico before reviving several U.S. factories April 14.

FCA said its production suspension will last until April 14, "dependent upon the various state stay-in-place orders and the readiness of each facility to return to production."

General Motors, after initially aiming to reopen its plants Monday, March 30, said last week, "The situation is fluid and can change week to week. We don't have firm return-to-work dates at this time."

Previewing what could be a battle over when workers should come back, UAW President Rory Gamble said the union was reviewing "with great caution and concern decisions being made about restarting workplaces, especially at advanced dates." Gamble said automaker executives must be guided by one simple question: "Would I send my family — my own son or daughter — into that plant and be 100 percent certain they are safe?"

In Canada, one local Unifor president said last week his members will take the lead from health agencies, not automotive executives.

“We’re going to go with what the medical professionals say. There’s a lot of things that need to be put in place,” Unifor Local 444 President David Cassidy said.

He represents about 4,500 workers at FCA’s Windsor, Ont., assembly plant, which produces the automaker’s minivans.

His members walked off the job nearly two weeks ago in fear of the virus after they found out one member was self-isolating after possibly secondhand contact with an infected person.

“We’ll play this by ear. The safety of our membership is No. 1,” Cassidy said.

Unifor Local 200 President John D'Agnolo, who represents workers at Ford’s engine plants in Windsor, Ont., told the CBC on March 25 that he wants to make sure his members are safe before returning to work.

"Right now, we're going to be going back to work as of April 20," he told the public broadcaster. "They haven't given us any more details after that.

“"They're ordering more supplies, like masks, like shields, to protect people that are going to be working within a six-foot radius. But that doesn't mean that they will be entirely safe. That's the dynamic we have right now."

In picking dates to restart idled factories across North America, automakers are attempting to balance worker safety with financial stability. They book revenue as vehicles are produced, and their cash reserves shrink with each day plants remain dark. But whenever production resumes, fear of COVID-19 could still linger among the work force.

The decisions are becoming even more difficult as the number of blue-collar workers who test positive for the virus — and die from it — grows.

"There is going to be some risk/reward calculation about when we go back to work, how we go back to work and what changes about that work," said Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry, labor and economics at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. "It would be really hard to go back into a plant when you know someone who contracted the disease and died."

Plants are like small cities where word travels fast. Workers could be shunned if colleagues find out they've been exposed to the virus.

"What happens when word spreads [that] your co-worker's spouse, or someone in their family that they live with, has COVID-19?" asked one former auto executive who asked to remain anonymous. "That is going to spread like wildfire through the plant. No one is going to want to work near that person."

The former executive also wondered how workers with medical conditions will feel about returning. He said automakers will need a plan to deal with worker uneasiness.

Companies, for instance, may need to back off on some disciplinary measures for absenteeism and try to loosen restrictions on the number of temporary employees they can use at a given time to make up for absences. Panicked workers could end up on short-term disability leave because of stress instead of going into the plants during this uncertain time.

Companies will need to "recognize that certain people just would rather not have the money, or have a reduced amount of money, and not be exposed to it," the former executive said. "How many deaths is it going to take before they shut the plant down once it gets going? It's more of a moral thing. What's acceptable?"

Through last week, at least four FCA union workers — three in Michigan and one in Indiana — had died in connection with COVID-19, as had two Ford workers in Michigan, according to the UAW.

A nonunion technical support worker at FCA's technology center in Auburn Hills, Mich., also died, two Detroit newspapers reported, prompting the postponement of work associated with its test laboratories and pilot plants there. FCA declined to comment on employee health matters, citing privacy restrictions.

The automakers face dire economic forecasts.

The Detroit 3 have borrowed billions of dollars in recent weeks to help weather the crisis. Ford and GM each withdrew their financial guidance for the year.

"Automakers have done all kinds of planning and girding their balance sheet for a recession, but no one planned for things to go down this quickly, and no one planned for zero production," Dziczek said. "Automakers are only making money when they're making vehicles. They're going to try and be down for the least amount of time necessary."

Jeff Schuster, president of Americas operations and global vehicle forecasts at LMC Automotive, said any extended downtime would significantly hurt margins and upcoming vehicle launches.

"It's like a strike, in a lot of ways, across the entire industry," he said.

While the ultimate cost of the current plant downtime is unknown, GM said it lost nearly $4 billion over the course of the 40-day UAW strike last fall during contract negotiations.

Whenever assembly lines start to move again, automakers face another potential problem: excess inventory as a result of low demand. Unemployment claims soared last week, and most consumers still working are more focused on buying groceries and other essentials right now and thus are liable to put off a big purchase such as a new vehicle.

LMC predicts full-year U.S. auto sales will fall to 14.2 million units, a 17 percent drop from 2019.

Art Wheaton, a professor of labor at Cornell University, said automakers could try to ease into production by running fewer shifts at first.

"I think there's going to be people who will take the sick days, or take the vacation days, and try to exercise the time off," Wheaton said. "But there's also a lot of people that [could say], 'I'm ready to go back to work. This is what we're paid to do. Let's go and make money so we can have a profit-sharing check and we can take care of [our] families in the future.' "

Of course, the longer the plants are down, the smaller next year's profit-sharing checks will be.