By: Tom Edmonds

Happy “Spring is here,” Brothers and Sisters,

First, I’d like to welcome our 6 new apprentices and 4 new toolmakers. These folk started on April 7th. Welcome Design and Engineering apprentices Christian Bautista, Meghan Ashbury, and Hanna Gates. Welcome Die Maker apprentices Javion Fuqua, Jackson Kartanys, and Carter Pifer. And welcome Journeyman Toolmakers Kyle Anderson, Nate Charbonneau, Melbourn Goss, and Zachary Roggow. We are excited to have you as part of our UAW family.

By the time you read this, everyone should know the details of the final 2023 Agreement SAP. For everyone eligible and considering it, I hope things work out well. While I’m going to be sad to see members go, I am happy for you to turn the page on the next chapter of life.

Now, as far as workload for the plant, Design and Engineering have spotty areas of reasonable workload, while others are still quite underutilized.

The Machine Shop is still on long hours, with weekend work available pretty regularly.

The Die Room work is definitely at a state where traditional utilization should have already kicked in, but we are not in agreement as to what stage that work should be at when utilization kicks in. Hopefully, we will have that settled soon.

The Toolroom continues to have a healthy workload with no end to that in sight.

The scheduling/allocation of work from the 3rd floor to the 1st floor continues to be quite volatile, with programs being canceled, postponed, or pulled ahead depending on the “flavor of the month,” as I like to call it. Seems to be a lot of reactive managing in the higher ranks of GM.

With that, although fairly short. This is what I have to report this month.