Back to business
Toyota reopens S.A. plant after seven-week closure
SAN ANTONIO — Toyota Motor Corp. on Monday reopened its San Antonio plant and 12 others in the U.S. and Canada after a seven-week hiatus, making it one of the first major automakers to resume production amid the coronavirus outbreak and slumping vehicle sales.
Detroit’s Big Three — General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles — have said they will reopen their North American factories on May 18.
“It is paramount that auto manufacturers get the restarts right the first time because their cash burn has accelerated greatly since the shutdowns began, and they cannot afford to shut them down again and send workers back home,” said Garrett Nelson, senior analyst at New York-based CFRA, an investment research firm.
Honda Motor Co. also restarted its U.S. and Canadian factories Monday.
At Toyota’s San Antonio plant, workers were greeted with the new routine — answering health and travel-related questions on an app on their cellphones, regular temperature checks and new social distancing guidelines inside the plant.
If any Tacoma or Tundra pickups rolled off the production line, the company wasn’t saying.
“This week is not about production,” Toyota spokeswoman Melissa Sparks said. “Our team members have been out for seven weeks so they are reconditioning and figuring out ‘the new normal.’ ”
Only one-third of Toyota’s local workers — about 1,000 of its nearly 3,000 employees — returned Monday. The company plans to resume
its normal two-shift production schedule on Thursday.
Company officials have said the new guidelines are designed to ensure worker safety.
Toyota employs more than 20,000 workers in North America. The automaker’s reopening is the first large-scale test of whether an automaker can protect the health of its workers during the pandemic.
Toyota plants have been shutdown since March 23.
“The big question remains if automakers have the appropriate measures in place to guarantee safety for all of its workers as they ramp up production during this new phase,” said Jessica Caldwell, executive director of insights at the automotive website Edmunds.com. “This is completely uncharted territory.”
Caldwell said assemblyline tasks usually require employees to work close to one another and are difficult to reconfigure to comply with social distancing rules.
“No one has ever had to configure an auto plant with COVID-19 in mind,” she said.
At Toyota’s U.S. and Canadian plants, the manufacturer has installed protective barriers for employees who work close to one another, and is requiring workers to wear face shields, masks and gloves.
Sparks said company officials have developed a plan in case an employee tests positive for COVID-19.
“Toyota will respond quickly and urgently to help mitigate the spread and slow the infection rate for our team members,” she said. “This includes sanitization of the work area and rapidly notifying all team members who may have been impacted.”
Weeks before its reopening, Toyota reported that two of its San Antonio employees had caught the coronavirus, among about two dozen across its North American operations. None of the workers died from COVID-19, according to the company.
United Auto Workers officials have said that more than more two dozen workers at plants run by the Big Three have died, including 15 who worked at Fiat Chrysler plants. Their North American auto plants, however, have been closed since mid-March.
Toyota’s North American workers are nonunionized.
On Monday, Reuters reported that the automaker plans to slash vehicles production of vehicles by nearly a third in North America through October because of the plunge in demand brought about by travel restrictions and stay-at-home orders.
Toyota officials did not respond to questions about the reported production cuts.
Caldwell said the move makes sense, but added that the situation remains fluid.
“The amount of production will likely shift depending on the pace of the economic recovery,” she said.
The two pickups produced at the San Antonio plant, the Tundra and Tacoma, saw plummeting sales in April from a year earlier — but they easily outperformed the rest of Toyota’s vehicle lineup.
The manufacturer’s overall vehicle sales dropped 53.9 percent in April. Sales of the Tundra fell 19.4 percent and Tacoma 30.4 percent.
Auto analysts say the demand for pickups is stronger than other vehicles. However, the facility is scheduled to relinquish production of the Tacoma, the best-selling midsize pickup in the U.S., by the end of next year.
Its production will shift to Toyota’s two plants in Mexico. In its place, the San Antonio plant will start producing the Sequoia SUV, which posted sales of about 10,000 in the U.S. last year.