Strattec Corner

By Bigg Al Olivares

As most of membership may already know, the Committee met with officials from the Company on Tuesday, September 17th, at their request. This meeting was to inform the Union about the "supposed" final movement of jobs out of our beautiful and profitable Milwaukee facility.

Of course, the usual reasons were the profitability and the competitiveness in the industry. I’m sure it had nothing to do with corporate greed.

The work targeted to be transferred is as follows; key finishing, #28 notcher, moved up four weeks to October, also Forty-one Molder and Forty-four Molder will be moved to SCA. D186 is on November schedule to be moved with the Forty-four Molder and # 25 notcher. Twenty-three notches and the Forty-one Molder are slated for December move. Shutter production and five machines associated with this production will be moving to SCA, Knaack production and seven machines associated with that will be moving to SDM, P-Truck production and three machines associated with that will also be moving to SDM. The total amount of good paying Union jobs we will be losing due to this lucrative strategic move are as follows; Three L.G. 18’s, One L.G. 20, One pieceworker, and One set-up. Remember these are the early numbers reported of the amount of people losing jobs- it may or may not go up.

Other things that are most likely to affect our amount of members at the Milwaukee facility are what the Company labeled as "workforce impacts from other sources". The Freightliner A22 lockset business was lost to Hurd. This, however, was not the Company nor membership’s fault; we just more or less got hosed by one of our competitors. The Company also told us that they are looking into rationalizing small dollar volume customers. What this boils down to for us, the membership, is some of the smaller orders Strattec gets from the ma and pa locksmiths and others will be re-evaluated to make sure that the cost to produce and assemble these locks is not greater than their long term cost.

We all continue to hear the word "decontenting." Well, the fact of the matter is that this is something that is really happening. As much as it seems at times, this is just a Company cover up word or phrase to blanket their reduction actions. We all can see that newer cars are going away from passenger door locks and other various internal locks we used to make. In Die Cast alone, this translated to a seven million-dollar loss and approximately a six million parts a year loss. As tragic as it is for our membership to have these losses, we can only hope and pray that new business Strattec bids on works out for us and keeps us in our jobs. Of course, provided the Company keeps them in the Milwaukee facility. On the note of new business, I’m sure many of you have heard about the BIG G.M. proposal and bid that is coming up VERY soon. Some may know that things are not really going that smooth with their bid. As far as quality concerns and things of that nature, it is really going to come down to the wire. Hopefully at the end of all this we will retain this new crucial G.M. business. If we do not unfortunately I feel we will see more job loss.

Another plan the Company is evaluating is what they refer to as the "Rightsizing of support functions for the Milwaukee operations." In laymen’s terms the Company is looking really hard at how many people they need in support areas. If you are confused as to what support jobs are, I will try to explain as best as I can. I will use die cast as an example seeing as that is my home department. Inspection, Skilled Trades, Tumblers and Buggy persons all support the Set-up persons who actually produce the physical part. Of course, we, as a Union disagree with that kind of rational because we feel we all support each other and when you start taking away from our legs and arms we are not going to function as efficiently. Just so everyone knows they are looking in these support areas to see where they can get rid of more of our members.