THUNDER BAY -- Forty 40 Bombardier workers have been notified they'll be temporarily laid off by week's end.
Company spokeswoman Stephanie Ash said they’re hoping the layoffs last no longer than six weeks, and blamed the decision on the inability to get the necessary parts to complete the LRV and bi-level trains affected by the layoff.
“We have some vendor and supplier issues that we are challenged with, as well as we have some work that we’re trying to undertake to make the production line more efficient here in Thunder Bay,” Ash said on Tuesday.
The layoffs, which come on the heels of 45 more laid off last month, are scheduled to go into effect beginning on Friday.
The decision affects about five per cent of the Unifor employees working at the plant, which was affected last summer by a strike that lasted about seven weeks.
Unifor’s Andy Savela called the news unfortunate.
“We haven’t really had a direct and clear response from the company with respect to the reasons why the layoffs are occurring,” Savela said.
“But we feel we have a good handle on the situation because our people who perform the assembly work on the floor are telling us that there are problems with the parts and the parts aren’t being delivered in a timely way.”
Both the company and union spokespeople said the situations has nothing to do with last summer’s strike and any production delays that might have arisen by the work stoppage.
“The strike didn’t impact that,” Savela said.
Ash said the company is committed to bringing the workers back to the job as soon as possible.
“We’re going to do everything we can to mitigate the impacts to the employees and their families. We anticipate at this point it will be a four-to-six week temporary layoff.”
Bombardier workers could face more layoffs later in 2015 when the Rocket production line completes its latest order.
While union officials have suggested it might make sense to move car-body production to Thunder Bay instead of Mexico, Ash said that’s not the answer. At present the car bodies are built in Mexico and shipped to Thunder Bay for completion.
“It sounds like a really easy solution,” Ash said. “But as we know it’s a little bit more complex than that. Bombardier, which is a global company, we’re part of this integrated global supply chain. We talked about it during the strike. It really is our global footprint that allows us to be cost-efficient and competitive as a site here in Thunder Bay.”
Savela said the light at the end of the tunnel is that it looks like the layoffs are only temporary. That doesn't ease his concern much, however.
“Initially your minds and thought turn to the workers and the impacts on the workers and their families. But overall, then you turn your mind to the broader concerns and the long-term implications.
“We really need to work together in a collaborative, co-operative way to ensure that we’re communicating with each other and we learn how to deal with these issues and we learn how to solve these problems so that we can continue making the quality product that we do,” Savela said.
More importantly, he added, if a solution is found the company can meet its production deadlines. If a solution isn’t found, the implications could lead potential customers to seek out other options.
