Shutdown

Does this look familiar? It should, as I've used this shot before in another post. No, I didn't take a picture today. I feel like what I'm writing about today takes precedence over what I'm shooting. I have some news about work, and frankly, I couldn't think of anything to shoot that would be relevant to today's post.

Rumors have been running rampant lately at work, but two have seemed quite persistent. One is that our Saturdays for this month will be canceled, and the other is that they're planing a two week shutdown for the month of October. Today I found out that not one, but both rumors are 100% true. Our Saturday for this weekend is canceled, and beginning Monday, I will be off for two weeks. They're also saying that our Saturdays will be cut off for the rest of the year. They've attributed this to an "inventory adjustment", which is management speak for "We busted your ass for 18 months and now we have too many cars." What's actually happened is a little more complicated. They have been working us a lot in anticipation of demand that really isn't there yet. The Caliber has sold well, the Patriot isn't selling as many as they'd hoped, and the Compass is just not selling. On top of that, they've been overproducing, as our contract is set to be renewed, and they have to prepare for the possibility of a strike. Add all this together, and you have a surplus of cars that must be accounted for. I also believe that Chrysler, facing the possibility of having to hire the 600 "ETEs", finds it more opportune to have the layoff now instead of later, since we are not now eligible to collect the "SUB pay" that would give us 95% of our pay for those two weeks. What it really all boils down to is piss-poor planning, and now the hourly workers are paying the price.

To wrap up, we're shut down for two weeks. I'll be able to collect unemployment, but we stand to lose quite a bit of money for these weeks. The "no more Saturdays" thing is just fine by me. I've been working 3 out of 4 Saturdays for 16 months, and frankly, I'm tired of it.