Published: Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Decisions on buyout due today
The company planned to have 1,000 workers, but all but 400 took buyouts.
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
WARREN — Delphi Packard Electric has until year's end to phase out its hourly employees who accepted a company-offered buyout, a union official said.
The company also has only until Dec. 31 to figure out how it will staff local operations with only some 400 of the current hourly work force of 3,800 who will be left — if the number of buyouts does not change significantly.
The final number of workers accepting buyouts will be known after 5 p.m. today, the deadline for employees to change their minds about taking the buyout and staying on the job.
The number of Packard workers who signed up for buyouts exceeded the company's goal.
Packard had planned to trim about 2,800 jobs from local plants with buyouts, leaving an hourly staff of slightly more than 1,000. However, nearly 3,400 workers signed up for buyouts, potentially leaving just 400 people on the job.
Neither company nor union officials were certain Tuesday what the final number would be.
Don Arbogast, shop chairman of International Union of Electrical Workers Local 717 at Packard, said previously that he expected some employees to rescind their decisions, but did not know how many.
"Right now we are in negotiations with the union on how we are going to run the operation going forward," Ann Cornell Vickers, Packard spokeswoman, said.
When asked how many hourly employees are needed to run the local operation, whether there will be fewer shifts, and if the company will try to hire temporary replacements, Vickers said "that's part of negotiations."
Lauren Asplen, spokeswoman in the IUE's national office, said the intent isn't to bring in a bunch of temporaries. "If there are jobs there, we should have them."
Regarding staffing, it's not as though everyone who took a buyout just leaves after today's deadline. The company can phase them out. People who have elected to leave are supposed to be out at the end of the year, and that could be subject to negotiated modifications, she said.
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