General Motors is using salaried employees to help build pickups at its Wentzville Assembly plant near St. Louis due to high absenteeism amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The practice has the UAW outraged. The union has issued a warning to the automaker, accusing GM of violating a clause in the 2019 union contract by putting white-collar workers in union jobs.
The local union has filed grievances against GM, the union said.
“We strenuously object to GM doing this,” said Brian Rothenberg, spokesman for the UAW.
GM said it has no choice if it is to rebuild inventory of the Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon mid-size pickups made at Wentzville. GM also makes the Chevy Express and GMC Savana full-size vans at Wentzville.
“We have had salaried employees working the line,” said company spokesman Jim Cain “The team on the ground in Wentzville is trying to navigate a very difficult situation to keep the plant operating, while accommodating employees who are not showing up to work due to concern of COVID.”
Paragraph 215 at issue
Wentzville runs three shifts with about 1,250 workers on each shift.
GM said it has struggled to staff all three shifts. In early July, GM told the Free Press that it would reduce its plant to two shifts starting July 20, killing the third overnight shift.
But it reversed course and kept the third shift, seeking to hire some 200 temporary workers to cover the absenteeism. Until it makes those hires, GM has been using volunteer salaried workers from different parts of the company to help out.
The number of salaried workers on the assembly line has varied by week. Some come from nearby GM facilities and some are from Detroit, Cain said. They mostly work the third shift and, depending on the week, it’s been “a few dozen, but it’s also been higher,” Cain said, adding, “We’re working very hard on a more permanent and stable solution.”
The UAW isn’t buying it. “The UAW believes it’s in violation to the recent contract,” Rothenberg said. “Paragraph 215 of the contract forbids this.”
Paragraph 215 in the contract reads in part: “Supervisory employees shall not be permitted to perform work on any hourly-rated job except in the following types of situations: (1) in emergencies arising out of unforeseen circumstances which call for immediate action to avoid interruption of operations; (2) in the instruction or training of employees, including demonstrating the proper method to accomplish the task assigned.”
GM’s Cain said he has not seen the grievance. He declined to comment further saying there is a process for evaluating and adjudicating such complaints. UAW’s Rothenberg said the grievances are filed first at the local level against GM where the local union and the company try to resolve the issues. If not, they get pushed up to the UAW International to resolve it with company.
Problem of absenteeism
GM said it does have hourly employees transferring to the plant now. Most are coming from GM’s Spring Hill Assembly plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee where, by July 31, GM said it would lay off 525 production and skilled trades workers and 155 temporary employees. GM cut a shift there due to slow auto sales in the sagging economy. GM makes the Cadillac XT5, Cadillac XT6 and GMC Acadia SUVs in Spring Hill.
“It takes time for people to actually transfer and it takes time to hire and on-board temp workers,” Cain said.
In the meantime, he said, “We’ve been relying on these salaried volunteers to help us continue to operate …and hopefully we’ll see reduced absenteeism.”
Cain declined to characterize how high absenteeism has been at Wentzville since GM restarted the plant in late May, after a nearly eight-week pandemic shutdown at all of GM’s North American plants. But he said GM would “not be taking these steps” if it wasn’t necessary.
The plant is located in St. Charles County, a hotbed of COVID-19 cases. As of midafternoon Monday, there were 5,284 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in St. Charles County and 106 deaths, according to the county’s public health website. That is up from 1,526 cases and 77 deaths in the county as of July 10.
In June, the UAW Local 2250, which represents the plant, had requested that GM shut down the plant. GM declined. No local union leaders responded to Free Press requests for comment on this story.
More:1,250 workers facing layoffs at GM’s Wentzville Assembly Plant
More:GM declines request to shut down plant as cases of coronavirus grow, union says
Training office workers
GM’s move is not unprecedented. Earlier this month, NPR reported that high absenteeism at a Honda plant in Marysville, Ohio, due to COVID-19 prompted Honda to put some of its white-collar office workers on the assembly line. But that plant is not unionized.
Honda makes its Accord sedan and coupe along with the Acura TLX and ILX luxury cars there.
Cain said the salaried workers GM has been using mostly come from the manufacturing side or “within a product capacity” so it’s not their first time inside a factory. Still, they receive training on the safety protocols, quality, health and how to perform the task they’ll be doing.
“They could be manufacturing engineers, so they’re familiar with what happens inside the four walls of an assembly plant. They’re not coming in cold, but they do have to learn a new job and quality,” Cain said. “We have extensive quality protocols designed throughout the entire system so we can track individual operations with extreme precision. We wouldn’t do anything that would risk compromising the reputation we have for quality.”
Contact Jamie L. LaReau at 313-222-2149 or jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.