LONGER AUTO SHUTDOWN
Chip deficit idles Essex extra week
Ford Motor Company will idle Windsor's Essex Engine Plant the week of April 26 due to the ongoing global microchip shortage.
Unifor Local 200 officials confirmed the plant would also be down Monday and next Friday. Ford had previously announced Essex Engine would be idle April 16 in addition to being down three days earlier this month.
The Annex engine plant will not be affected by any shutdowns.
The shutdowns will affect about 850 employees.
Ford's other Ontario production facility in Oakville is currently in the first week of a three-week shutdown.
“It's a complete disaster right now,” D'agnolo said. “They have no say and can't do anything about the chip shortage.
“There's a ton of unknowns about the future.”
The latest shutdowns are the result of Ford idling plants in Chicago, Flat Rock, Mi., Kansas City and Ohio for the weeks of April 19 and 26.
Its Kentucky complex will be down April 26 and May 3. The plant will also see overtime shifts eliminated on May 8, 16, 22, 29 and 31.
The two Windsor plants supply engines to all those U.S. plants other than Chicago.
D'agnolo said there could be more shutdown weeks for the Windsor plants ahead. The company hasn't yet laid out its plans for May.
“It's a juggling act for the company,” D'agnolo said.
“As soon as the chips come, Ford is using them. They have a plan on where they're sending the chips they get.”
D'agnolo said Ford is prioritizing production of its truck line. Ford's F-series trucks are by far the most popular vehicles in North America and huge profit makers for the company.
“They're trying to perform a balancing act,” D'agnolo said. “People want their vehicles.
“However, some people rely on those vehicles to run their companies.
“Ford doesn't want to lose out on those sales of large numbers.
It's just a frustrating process for everyone.”
While the Essex engine plant's shutdown won't have any effect on local suppliers, the extended shutdown at Oakville certainly will.
Three Windsor firms supply parts for the Ford Edge's chassis, the largest of them being Flex N Gate.
“We have feeder plants in Windsor and all over Ontario,” said Marc Brennan, Unifor's vice chair of the Ford council and a committee person in the Oakville plant.
“The weeks Oakville is down, the reality is our feeder plants are also down or partially down. It has a ripple effect.”
The Oakville complex, which will return to operation May 3, will have been down six weeks in 2021 and 21 weeks in the past year by then.
Brennan said the chip shortage has struck Oakville and its suppliers in a multiple of ways.
Just when the chips come in for one type of computerized module allowing for supply to return, the shortage affects another type of module.
“It costs a lot of money for the feeder plants to go down and then ramp back up,” Brennan said. “It's costing the auto companies billions on their bottom line and we know that'll trickle down to the workforce.”
Brennan said the inability to manufacture key products in a variety of areas from microchips to vaccines and health-care equipment needs to be a wake-up call for governments and industry about strengthening domestic supply chains.
“The semiconductor chip shortage, we don't have control over the product,” Brennan said.
“We're at the mercy of them coming from Asia and China. Our No. 1 concern is we have too many parts where there's no control and no one makes it in North America or preferably Canada.”