The final Dodge Ram van will roll off the assembly line in Windsor today, but Shane Dunning won't be there to see it.
Mr. Dunning, a tool maker at the Pillette Road plant that will shut its doors today, has been on layoff since the first week of May as production began winding down.
"I'm on the unemployment line," said the 37-year-old father of two, a seven-year veteran of the DaimlerChrysler Canada Inc. operation. "I'm going to have to go out in the work force again."
He's one of 300 to 400 people who will be on the street because of the closing.
The end of the Pillette plant reflects not only a declining market for the commercial vans that carry plumbers and electricians to their job sites and travellers to airport hubs around the country from outlying cities and towns -- it's also a sign of the latest troubles battering DaimlerChrysler, which has a sprawling presence in the Rose City.
Twice, the auto maker has been prepared to replace the jobs disappearing at Pillette.
The first time was in 1999, when it promised a $1.5-billion revamp to manufacture Dodge trucks and sport utility vehicles. It even went so far as to spend $100-million on the shell of a new paint shop that now sits empty and forlorn as a giant white elephant on a corner of the Pillette property. But the plan was scrapped in 2001, when the Chrysler group eliminated 26,000 jobs in North America and closed some plants amid a financial restructuring.
More recently, the Canadian Auto Workers union won a second chance at replacing the Pillette jobs. During contract talks last fall, the CAW persuaded DaimlerChrysler to propose building a new, flexible assembly plant in Windsor to assemble a small pickup truck.
Parent DaimlerChrysler Corp. bailed out on the new plant last month, faced with fierce competition in North America, too much vehicle assembly capacity and more financial troubles, including an expected second-quarter loss of more than $1-billion (U.S.) at the Chrysler operations.
The new plant "would have been great for me," said Mr. Dunning, who, instead of looking forward to a job there, will receive benefits and employment insurance topped up by what's known as SUB -- supplementary unemployment benefits -- for about a year.
The closing is hardly a shocking or crippling economic blow to Windsor, which is also home to a DaimlerChrysler minivan plant that employs about 5,600 people, plus several Ford Motor Co. engine plants with about 6,000 employees and a General Motors Corp. transmission factory.
These are the kind of high-paying jobs that have kept the city booming during the industry's good times and gloomy during the downturns.
Despite the boom-and-bust roller coaster, people in Windsor have coveted such jobs.
A father would ease the way for other family members, as Barry Mino -- who retired from Pillette Road about a year ago -- did for his son-in-law, Mr. Dunning, and his own son, Russell Mino, who now works at the Windsor Assembly Plant, where the company's best-selling minivans are put together.
The closing is causing upheaval throughout DaimlerChrysler operations in the city because the 500 or so workers at Pillette who have turned down an early retirement package worth $60,000 or a voluntary severance agreement worth up to $120,000 can bump employees out of jobs at the minivan plant.
Mr. Dunning possesses such bumping rights, but there are already nine tool makers laid off between the two plants. If that number rises to 20 once Pillette closes, he will rank 11th on the seniority list, so he has little hope of being recalled.
The bumping rights mean some employees at the minivan plant will be laid off. Others have decided it's time to move on and do something else.
One of those is Mel Freeman, 31, who said his mind is about 80 per cent made up that he'll take a $55,000 severance offer and end his eight years of toiling in the minivan plant. He's going to turn his part-time job as a pastor at Bethlehem Fellowship in nearby LaSalle, Ont., into a full-time job.
"I'm not contemplating leaving because I didn't like it," Mr. Freeman said. "The company's good; the people are good. There's a higher calling on my life than building cars. It's building lives."
The $29-an-hour pay he received for hanging a sliding door on the minivan made it hard to walk away, he acknowledged.
"But when I started there, I knew it wasn't going to be a 30-year thing for me," he said.
The combination of early retirement plans and an increase in production of the new Pacifica crossover utility vehicle at the minivan plant was supposed to provide employment for almost everyone who wanted it, said Ken Lewenza, president of CAW local 444, which represents workers at both plants.
However, instead of adding people to increase Pacifica output, "the Windsor Assembly Plant is going to have an incredible attack on productivity and efficiency," Mr. Lewenza said. "They're going to try to do it with the existing work force."
Asked whether he feels betrayed by the moves the company has made, Mr. Lewenza, who is not shy about saying what's on his mind, paused. "Betrayed is a pretty tough word," he said. "I would say I'm disappointed."
Later on, however, he described the company's decision to scrap the new plant as the equivalent of "getting hit in the head with a bowling ball."
When Mr. Lewenza was first elected executive vice-president of local 444 in 1990, Pillette was his first assignment.
"The trends were there that the maxivan might have outlived its usefulness. . . . We put an incredible effort into Pillette in the past 10 years. This was a 10-year battle."
But he was battling forces beyond his control, including the Canada-U.S. free-trade agreement, then the North American free-trade agreement and a successful challenge by Europe and Japan of the Canada-U.S. auto pact, which was the reason Pillette was built.
It was the early 1970s and soaring sales of the big vans meant that what was then Chrysler Canada Inc. was violating auto pact requirements that it assemble one truck in Canada for every one sold in this country.
Instead of insisting on a fine, however, the federal government told the auto maker to build a plant. The result was a $44-million investment and Pillette Road began turning out big vans in January, 1976.
The final van that rolls off the line will be No. 2,309,344 and will be donated to the Walter P. Chrysler Museum at DaimlerChrysler Corp. headquarters in Auburn Hills, Mich.
Mr. Lewenza is the second of three generations of his family to work for Chrysler in Windsor. His son, Ken Jr., works at the minivan plant but has also worked at Plant 6, as people in Windsor refer to Pillette.
His niece, Heather Lewenza, who worked in the minivan plant, is taking the voluntary severance package and moving to Montreal to become a jazz singer.
"We've got one plant now in Windsor," Mr. Lewenza said. "If there's no alternative for growth, obviously the hiring stops."
Pillette Road plant
Production start: January, 1976
Monicker: People in Windsor refer to Pillette as Plant 6
Vehicles produced: Dodge Ram van (cargo applications) and Dodge Ram wagon (passenger uses)
Peak production: 124,124 vehicles in 1984
Total production: 2,309,344
Employment on two shifts: 2,000 people
Production end: June 12, 2003