The COVID-19 outbreak in Michigan is beginning to affect car production, and a major Ram truck plant has reduced production due to the large number of workers absent.
About 10 percent of workers at the Stellantis assembly plant (formerly Fiat Chrysler) in Sterling Heights, north of Detroit, have tested positive or quarantined, a person informed on Friday said. This is equivalent to about 600 workers, said the person who asked not to be identified, because neither the company nor the United Auto Workers union give details.
The 400,000-square-meter plant (5 million square meters) has about 7,450 hourly contract workers, but not all are on assembly lines. To try to stop the deficit, the company turned to workers at a nearby truck factory in Warren, Michigan, who was forced to close by a global shortage of semiconductors.
But because those workers need to be trained to build the new Ram trucks, the assembly line is moving slower than normal, said the person, who said he did not know how much production was lost.
For weeks, Michigan had the highest average weekly number of coronavirus cases in the country, with 538 per 100,000 residents, according to federal government data.
The UAW has confirmed that cases are rising in Sterling Heights. Many of the absent workers did not give positive results, but are waiting for tests or have been isolated due to contact with other people who have the virus, the union said.
“Although the numbers are changing depending on the exchange, we can say that there has been a recent increase in cases, as is the case in Michigan,” UAW Vice President for Stellantis Cindy Estrada said in a statement.
He urged workers to be careful to “keep the plants and members of the UAW and their families safe.”
Stellantis also declined to give figures, but confirmed that it had employees who tested positive for coronavirus.
The company said in a statement that it had taken steps to keep factory workers safe and urged them to get vaccinated.
“We remain aggressive in following the recommended guidelines for following up contacts,” the statement said. “We also continue to encourage our employees to follow the same health and safety measures whenever they leave home.”
The Ram truck, the third most popular vehicle in America, is a major source of revenue for Stellantis. The company sold 563,000 of these trucks last year.
Stellantis’ rivals, Ford and General Motors, have said they have not lost production in recent weeks to COVID-19.
Slowdown in Sterling Heights was first reported on Friday by Bloomberg News.