Employee at Van Rob says plant may close

At the Monday, Jan. 19, Tecumseh City Council Meeting, Kurt Matson, a skilled trades representative for United Auto Workers Local 3000, informed council that KIRCHHOFF Automotive has threatened to move work and close the KIRCHHOFF Van-Rob factory east of Tecumseh, located at 1200 E. Chicago Blvd., if the union does not open its contract and possibly take concessions. KIRCHHOFF Automotive merged with Van-Rob in 2011, “We ratified our recent contract less than two years ago,” said Matson. “Our contract is for five years. Because of the recent mismanagement and current unprofitability on our new work that we have obtained, management has threatened to move this work out of our facility and close the plant if we don’t open our contract and possibly take concessions.” Matson added that Van-Rob President and chief operations officer Tony Parente has tried to strong-arm the union for meeting. At a hastily called meeting on Sunday, Jan 11, 202 union members — out of the 580 now employed there — voted to not open the contract, according to Matson. “I believe the city council should be aware of what’s going on,” said Matson. A KIRCHHOFF Van-Rob Tecumseh spokesperson said that there was nobody at the Tecumseh plant or any other facility that could talk about current contract negotiations. A message left for KIRCHHOFF Van-Rob Human Resources Manager Bruce Martin, who’s located at the Van-Rob’s plant in Waverly, Ohio, was not returned. However, his outgoing voicemail message said he would be in Tecumseh from Wednesday, Jan. 21, to Friday, Jan. 23, and again from Monday, Jan. 26 to Wednesday, Jan. 28. Tecumseh City Manager Kevin Welch said that the city has not heard from the company about closing or the threat of closing and that the city only knows of what Matson said at Monday’s meeting, Jan. 19. In January 2013, the company promised adding 200 jobs to the Van-Rob facility by 2020 after Tecumseh City Council approved a seven-year, 100-percent tax abatement on new equipment. Over the last two years, the factory has expanded and has been added to the Tecumseh Local Development Finance Authority (LDFA). In 2014, the plant was also added to the Tecumseh-Adrian SmartZone LDFA, which is a satellite operation of the Ann Arbor Spark SmartZone LDFA.

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