General Motors offered its office employees to temporarily work as car assembly line workers at a plant in Wentzville (Missouri, USA) - to eliminate the shortage of some models.
Due to the burst of pent-up demand triggered by the recent "coronavirus crisis", the plant has switched to a three-shift operation, but still cannot cover the shortage of Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon pickup trucks, as well as Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana commercial vans. To improve the situation, GM management decided to involve volunteers among office workers in the production of cars. It is reported that there are not many of them - about two dozen, in total 4,100 people work at the plant, but the company needs another 200 specialists.
The United Auto Workers did not like this "knight's move": it claims that the labor agreement is violated in this way. However, GM is not going to abandon this practice in the near future, and the situation will continue until workers from other enterprises arrive at the Wentzville plant. But without office workers, production would not be able to shift to three shifts, GM spokesman Jim Cain said. “To help us find a long-term solution, we asked for volunteers from a hired team, primarily from the manufacturing sector, to spend at least a week working on the line,” Automotive News quoted Kane as saying.
According to the results of the second quarter of this year, sales of Colorado pickups in the United States fell by 37%, GMC Canyon - by half.
It should be noted that recently the North American division of Honda began to operate in this way, however, its management, as reported by foreign automotive publications, set a similar task to its employees in an ultimatum form. For the production of cars, the Japanese brand attracted specialists from the departments of procurement, research and development, and even accountants.
Staffing problems forced General Motors to send office workers to the plant
