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May 1, 2006
Bobby Fuller works for a local automotive supplier, but he's not worried about his job, even though another supplier shut down last week.
Fuller drives a forklift at the Plastech Engineered Products plant, which makes the interior trim for the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon vehicles that General Motors builds at its Shreveport plant. And it's the local GM plant that acts as a barometer for him -- not the April 24 closing of battery maker Exide Technologies, which had supplied Ford Motor Co.
"As long as GM is doing well, I have a job here," Fuller said.
Representatives for many of the United Auto Workers, Local 2297, who work at the various local automotive suppliers to GM, are saying the same thing. While the Exide closure is not good news for its employees, analysts and those in the sector say it also isn't the harbinger of things to come for local auto suppliers.
The health of GM's Shreveport plant speaks for the viability of most local automotive suppliers.
"As long as GM is running in Shreveport, those supply plants in Shreveport will be running," said David Kitterlin, president of UAW Local 2166, representing GM employees. "That's what keeps those supply plants going. They feed off our schedule."
Although GM is undergoing cuts to its workforce nationwide to right its financial ship, the local plant has seen no layoffs. It has been making truck models that sell and is the only plant in North America that builds the popular Hummer H3.
The approximately 1,200 members of UAW Local 2297 in the dozen or so companies supplying parts to the GM plant must consider this as they weigh the full impact of Exide's closure.
Still, car manufacturing in the U.S. has been a struggle for GM, as billions of dollars in losses in 2005 attest. And even though auto parts suppliers traditionally operate on tight profit margins, last year was a particularly difficult one for Plastech, according to Kurt Foreman, senior vice president for economic development for the Greater Shreveport Chamber of Commerce.
But Coplas Inc., a supplier of plastic for certain bumpers on Colorados, Canyons and Hummer H3s, isn't nervous about the Exide closure. The west Shreveport company's 13 employees need only look across a set of railroad tracks to see the source of their livelihood.
"We're braced for any time GM has to tighten their belts," Plant Manager Kermit Welch said.
"Anyone tied to (GM) will be affected when they go through any cutbacks, and usually not in a positive fashion."
At Grupo Antolin, production manager Bill Porter sang a similar tune, but with giant auto parts maker Delphi Corp. in the lyrics. Grupo Antolin employs about 30 workers and makes headliners, or the row of lights along the side of a vehicle's roof, in H3s and Colorados, and the company sequences the exhaust systems.
"What's going on at Delphi is what's really important to us, and many others in the area," Production Manager Bill Porter said.
Delphi has recently threatened to void its labor contracts and restructure employee benefits, a step its unions -- including the UAW -- have said could initiate a massive strike. Delphi is the former parts unit of GM, spun off to become its own entity.
Analysts have said a work stoppage by the UAW at Delphi would almost immediately force GM to shut down most of its plants in North America because of its reliance on Delphi's parts.
For its part, Plastech laid off about 150 workers at the Shreveport facility in 2005, and now has about 200 workers. On Dec. 16, workers also agreed to take a $2-an-hour pay cut, lose five paid holidays and go without raises for 2 ½ years.
But Plastech isn't due for any more job cuts, according to Keisha Johnson, first shift union representative for UAW Local 2297.
Local auto parts suppliers have said they would expect many former Exide workers to knock on their doors for employment opportunities. And the companies might be inclined to hire some of those workers if they have openings in the future, said Jacques Lasseigne, Shreveport regional manager with the Louisiana Department of Labor.
But the tight-margin sector may not be hiring locally anytime soon, Foreman added.
"Those in the automotive suppliers industry, they live with uncertainty and these issues all the time," he said. "For them (Exide's closure) was more of the same."
Either way, at least one fellow auto parts worker is ready to offer a note of sympathy.
"I don't know much about Exide," Fuller said. "But I hate that they lost their jobs over there."
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