NEW YORK — Chrysler says it will close all 30 of its manufacturing plants for a month starting Friday.

The company needs to match production to slowing demand and conserve cash.

Tighter credit markets are keeping would-be buyers away from their showrooms, Chrysler says. Dealers are unable to close sales for buyers due to a lack of financing, and estimate that 20 to 25 percent of their volume has been lost due to the credit situation.

Chrysler claims it is nearing the minimum level of cash it needs to run the company and will have trouble paying bills after the first of the year.

Operations at the 30 plants will be idled at the end of shift on Friday, Dec. 19, and will not come back online until Jan. 19, 2009, or later.

 

Wow, maybe the unions and auto execs will get the message with NO money coming in??

 

That will for sure close the doors on at least 2 small and 1 larger local supply factory's here that have been down to only a very minimum workers to keep them open for the last month!!!

 

Only the US plants, overseas (ie Mexico) will stay open. And normally they get a 2 week break for the holidays anyway, this only extend that break for 2 weeks. So, making it sound a little worse than it is, which is to be expected by the news media and a company asking for Billions of dollars in bailout money...

 

Not the union members. They will still get nearly full wages and benefits during the shut down. It is in their contract. But the funny thing is the UAW leader says they will go to collect unemployment! Why or how could they get unemployment when they are still getting paid??

 

Yep, said the workers will be paid a reduced salary and tap into unemployment as well. Seems they will get paid for staying home.... though at a reduced rate.

 

Must be nice. Wish I could get paid for doing nothing, while screwing over the company I work for. Great stuff.

 

hahahaha, yea, that's awesome....! better get used to it though...

Hay

 

There are unions and there are UNIONS; meaning that the UAW has got it fixed now so that they don't have to work, I guess. UPS is union (Teamsters) and those boys (and girls) put out the work. The company supplies the job opportunity and the employee/union members do the heavy lifting. Since UPS drives it's managers to some pretty extreme measures the union maintains a balance by preventing a return to low-pay/sweatshop conditions for the rank and file. I put in 25 years there and think that the Teamster/UPS relationship is pretty much as good as it gets. The UAW and the auto execs need a good, stiff jolt of reality. My 2¢.