Caravan/Town & Country sales put DCX crews on OT
Employee pricing, foldaway seats credited for buying binge

Minivan sales have been so hot for Chrysler dealers recently that overtime has been scheduled at DaimlerChrysler Inc.'s Windsor Assembly Plant for the rest of the year, the CAW says.

July sales of the Chrysler Town and Country in the U.S. were up 87 per cent over the same month last year and American sales of the upscale van are up nearly 48 per cent for the first seven months of the year with 122, 293 units compared to 82,872 last year, the company says.

At Windsor Assembly, nearly every Saturday until Christmas has been "protected" on the Windsor plant's employee schedule for potential overtime, Local 444 president Ken Lewenza confirmed Tuesday. Only "the odd" Saturday is not booked for OT, he said.

The Windsor plant builds 3,800 Chrysler Town and Country vehicles per week and St. Louis builds 1,600 per week.

Windsor also builds 1,900 Dodge Caravans per week, while St. Louis builds 5,100 per week, as of last week.

The company does not comment on its work schedule more than one week in advance, but Chrysler executives are "incredibly excited about the minivan market," Lewenza said in a discussion with The Windsor Star's editorial board.

"They jump out of the showrooms today," he said of the minivans.

The reasons for the huge sales, Lewenza says, are employee pricing and Stow 'n Go -- the company's trademarked name for its two rows of foldaway rear seats.

But the union is concerned that the red-hot summer clearance sales might have an unwanted long-term effect such as "pull-ahead," Lewenza said, in which people who were planning to buy months or a year from now buy today, removing the potential of the future sales.

"Are we pulling them ahead early?" Lewenza asked about July's huge sales figures, which were driven mainly by Detroit's employee-pricing promotions. "Are we going to see a slowdown in October or November? We don't know."

The union is also keeping a worried eye on skyrocketing gasoline prices, which are getting into the territory where lucrative truck sales could be affected. Canada's automotive assembly plants build far more trucks and vans than cars.

The union has been told that the ratio of Pacificas to minivans built in Windsor will be changed again in September to favour the minivans. The Windsor plant currently builds four vans for every Pacifica it assembles. The mix is changed several times per year to reflect sales trends.

On other issues, Lewenza said layoff notices have been issued in Windsor to reflect the coming of Labour Day. The layoffs are traditionally issued to the workers hired to fill in for summer vacation absences.

The layoff number will be less than 200, he said.

Lewenza confirmed that the plant will be losing "hundreds" of jobs in both Windsor and Brampton in the near future as a result of the contract talks underway with DaimlerChrysler.

When talks started in Toronto last month, CAW President Buzz Hargrove warned his members that the company wanted to take a significant number of jobs out of the plant, probably through outsourcing.




-Matt-