Coronavirus halts auto plants in KCK, Claycomo. Workers may fare better than most
Thousands of Kansas City-area auto workers won’t have to report to work as the Big Three automakers announced their facilities would shut down in the wake of the new coronavirus.
General Motors has a plant in Kansas City, Kansas, and Ford has one in Claycomo.
T.J. Berry, executive director of the Clay County Economic Development Council, said the impact of the closure “depends on how long the plants are closed down.”
Ford employs about 8,000 people in Clay County.
Berry said employees across many sectors will face challenges as the coronavirus forces restaurants and retailers to shutter.
But Ford’s employees may be in a better position to handle the economic instability.
“For a Ford worker, they’ve got a lot of safety nets underneath them because of their union,” Berry said.
Workers will likely receive supplemental pay and unemployment benefits, the Associated Press reported.
Ford, General Motors and Fiat Chrysler agreed Wednesday to close their plants, affecting about 150,000 employees.
GM said in a statement that it was suspending operations “due to market conditions, to deep clean facilities and continue to protect people.”
The decision came one day after United Auto Workers urged the companies to cease production for two weeks.
Production at GM will be reevaluated March 30.
Clarence Brown, president of UAW Local 31, hadn’t received official word of the shutdown, but said people working in GM’s Fairfax plant in KCK have been concerned about coming into work.
Nick Livick, a GM production team leader at Fairfax, told The Star that he hadn’t been to work yet, but from what he’s seen his fellow workers are relieved because of the risk of working in a manufacturing plant during a pandemic.
“Everyday we go through and touch the same turnstiles, same door handles, we use tools, we rotate, most jobs are not 6 feet apart, people are next to each other all day and there’s no way to escape it,” he said. “In a hypothetical situation, let’s say someone who installs the wire harness gets COVID-19 and coughs on the wire harness, now you have the next 10 to 15 jobs seating it and all through, trim people are making electrical connections, transferring germs throughout the car and potentially infecting the hundreds of people down the line from them.”
Livick said GM has not yet put out information about whether workers can take leave and added that he hopes workers can apply for unemployment.
“Any factory with an assembly line is a powder keg, there is no possible way to sanitize a car going down the line and we build over 400 a night through general assembly,” Livick said. “It’s been very stressful as we watch schools close down and hear the government tell us to take drastic measures while our management tells us to keep the line humming.”
Several workers walking into the plant Wednesday afternoon expressed relief.
One man said he welcomed news of the shutdown, especially because he has underlying health conditions that make something like the coronavirus even deadlier.
Another man noted that about 3,000 employees use the same six doors to enter the plant and many work in close proximity.
Others said they thought the closure should have happened sooner.
GM workers at Fairfax said they had not heard what compensation or unemployment benefits would be available, but that the union would give them some leverage in negotiating the terms.
The shutdown is scheduled to start Friday in the body shop and continue to other parts of the facility, an employee said.
Twenty-one COVID-19 cases have been identified in Kansas. At least 16 cases have been found in Missouri.
More than 7,300 cases have been reported in the U.S. and more than 100 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.
This story was originally published March 18, 2020 at 4:04 PM.
