The four-week idling comes at a time when Chrysler's future is less certain than ever, with growing fear that a shut-down... could become permanent.
MAYOR KATHERINE PROCOP: "There's always that fear"
That's Twinsburg Mayor Katherine Procop, who long been an advocate for the auto industry.
PROCOP:"We've watched the industry lose money every quarter, so that's why we've been preparing for years -- the possibility that the Stamping Plant may not be here someday."
One way they've been preparing, Procop says, is by diversifying.
New businesses have moved into the city in the past decade, while existing businesses have expanded.
Now Chrysler is joined by including Hitachi and Goodrich, reducing Chrysler's contribution to the tax base from 75 percent a decade ago ...to just 12 percent now.
Of course, much of that drop is due to Chrysler's own cutbacks; the plant employs 900 workers today, compared with 25 hundred in the mid-1990s.
But Procop insists the area isn't going to give up on its largest employer.
PROCOP: "We're hopeful and feel confident they'll be able to survive this downturn, but - you never know."
For the workers in her city, the month-long closing isn't a total loss of income... They'll receive holiday pay, 'supplemental pay' from the company, and state unemployment. And they fully believe they'll be back on the job - by the end of January.
Similarly, Ford workers in Brook Park - where the engine plant holiday shutdown is just 'three' weeks instead of four, said through UAW officials today that morale is as good as it could possibly be under the circumstances.
Rick Jackson - 90.3.
