Volvo Trucks to Lay off 734 Workers at Its Virginia Plant

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Associated Press / December 1, 2015

Volvo Trucks will lay off 734 production workers at its plant in southwest Virginia due to a slowdown in demand, the company disclosed Tuesday.

Layoffs at the New River Valley Assembly Plant in Dublin will take place over three weeks starting in early February, company spokesman John Mies said.

He added that Volvo must adapt to market changes including a decline in demand for long-haul trucks.

"We're seeing that highway truck customers, who drove much of the recent market growth in America, have largely accomplished the renewal of their fleet, so demand from that segment in particular is softening," Mies said.

The 1.6-million-square-foot plant currently employs 2,800 workers and is the largest Volvo truck manufacturing facility in the world.

The company still intends to move forward with its plan to spend $38.1 million in upgrades at the plant, Mies said.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced in September that Volvo Trucks would build a 36,000-square-foot facility in Dublin, in Virginia's Pulaski County, featuring a product showroom, training rooms, a 200-seat theater and an observation area for viewing trucks on a 1.1-mile "customer experience" track.

Suzanne Clark, spokeswoman for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, stressed that Volvo operates in a cyclical market and said she's confident that jobs will return to the Volvo plant when demand in the trucking industry recovers.

"This will certainly have an effect on economic development in Pulaski County, but, as always, we're hopeful to identify any opportunity to help with the transition and help the region recover," Clark said.

An economic development official for Pulaski County and representatives from United Auto Workers Local 2069, which represents some of the plant's workers, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

Related reading:

http://www.bigmacktrucks.com/index.php?/topic/42752-volvo-to-cut-production-in-december-january/

http://www.bigmacktrucks.com/index.php?/topic/42494-layoffs-likely-to-hit-mack-trucks/

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Layoff at Dublin Volvo plant comes as union contract nears expiration

The Roanoke Times / December 1, 2015

Those in and around Pulaski County’s Volvo truck plant, one of the largest employers in Western Virginia, were coming to terms Tuesday with another announcement of a mass layoff.

Volvo will lay off 734 production employees over a three-week period in February, news that county officials first learned after a notice the company filed Tuesday. That represents a quarter of the plant’s workforce.

The announcement came just two months after politicians and other officials met at the plant to trumpet a $38 million expansion.

The layoff announcement also came the day before the plant’s United Auto Workers Local Chapter 2069 is set to vote on whether or not leadership can authorize a strike in the future, according to the union’s Facebook page. Early next year, a five-year agreement from 2011 between the union and Volvo is set to expire.

When that agreement was ratified by the union in 2011, Volvo rehired about 700 workers who had previously been laid off.

Multiple union leaders and members declined to speak with The Roanoke Times on Tuesday afternoon.

Volvo spokesman John Mies wrote in an email that the layoffs are the result of economic shifts and have nothing to do with any other factors at the plant.

“We regret having to take this action, but we operate in a cyclical market, and we have to adapt to market demand,” he wrote. “The North American truck market is going through an industry-wide correction. Highway customers, who drove much of the recent market growth, have largely accomplished the expansion and renewal of their fleets, so demand from that segment in particular is softening.

“The U.S. economy also is navigating through a soft interval caused by high inventory levels, which has decreased manufacturing and freight levels.”

The layoffs announcement at Volvo comes on the heels of the late-September economic development announcement by Gov. Terry McAuliffe at the plant. At that time, Volvo pledged to invest $38.1 million and add 32 jobs as part of a project to add a new customer experience center.

The new 36,000-square-foot center will feature a theater, training rooms and an observation area where people can watch trucks on the company’s test track. Mies said at the time the project should be done by the end of 2016. He said Tuesday that the project will go forward.

In 2014, a similar announcement was made for a $69 million investment to add 200 jobs. It appears those 200 jobs may now be lost.

Volvo’s layoffs don’t bode well for the New River Valley economy and dampen the efforts of business groups that exist specifically to help the largely rural region attract major companies, officials said Tuesday.

Charlie Jewell, executive director of the New River Economic Development Alliance, said it’s sad to think about the aftermath for the employees.

“That was the first thought,” said Jewell, whose organization markets the region to potential outside employers. “It’s the cyclical nature of the heavy truck assembly industry. It’s not uncommon that Volvo has layoffs, but this is for sure one of the largest ones they’ve had in recent years.”

One of the more recent major layoffs at Volvo occurred in 2009 when the Dublin plant axed 431 employees. That move brought the plant’s workforce to just under 1,000.

Jewell said he remains optimistic about the plant’s future.

“I’m hopeful that they will have some bounce back and that economic conditions will improve and they will be able to have more orders,” he said.

For the time being, Jewell said his organization “will continue to market the region and try to recover new recruitment opportunities for companies to relocate to the New River Valley.”

“They help diversify the employment base for not only Pulaski County, but the New River Valley,” he said.

Jewell pointed to recent success examples in Korona Candles and Red Sun Farms’ high-tech greenhouse, both of which are in Dublin, like Volvo.

Korona and Red Sun opened their New River Valley facilities at about this time last year. Korona has about 160 employees, while Red Sun announced in 2013 that it would eventually bring up to 205 jobs in the area.

Red Sun’s greenhouse currently occupies 28 acres, but Jewell said the company plans to expand its Dublin operations to roughly 60 acres through future phases.

Jewell said the state Rapid Response team, which operates locally through the New River Community College, plans to work with Volvo workers that will be affected. The team, he said, provides a variety of services to workers hit by layoffs and plant closings through activities such as financial management seminars, skills training and assistance with job searches.

Michael Solomon, the county’s economic development director, said the Volvo layoff notice came as a result of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires companies to give advanced notice before initiating a mass layoff.

Solomon said the state team has already been put in place to help the affected employees find jobs.

“My hope is that the systems in place will be able to help out these people,” Solomon said. “And we’ll help them out any way we can.”

The 1.6-million-square-foot plant in Pulaski County is the largest Volvo truck manufacturing facility in the world and the largest employer in Pulaski County with 2,800 workers. It’s the birthplace of every Volvo tractor-trailer on North American highways, according to the company.

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FYI

Volvo brand 3rd quarter North America orders fell 30 percent.

Mack brand 3rd quarter North America orders fell 51 percent.

http://www.bigmacktrucks.com/index.php?/topic/42364-mack-third-quarter-deliveries-increase-6-percent/?hl=51

Ford is adding 2,000 jobs at Louisville, the result of a $1.3 billion upgrade and expansion (http://www.bigmacktrucks.com/index.php?/topic/42891-ford-plans-13-billion-upgrade-of-kentucky-truck-plant/).