Chrysler Absenteeism Declines ‘Big-Time’

WARREN, MI – Chrysler’s hourly-worker absenteeism has fallen to the lower end of the industry average since the auto maker emerged from bankruptcy in 2009, says Al Iacobelli, vice president-employee relations.

“We historically ran anywhere between 16%-18%,” he tells WardsAuto. “That’s a big number.”

North America’s industry absenteeism rate is calculated by factoring in all time off, including vacations and personal days. “Today, we’re roughly around 10%,” he says.

Considering the industry average in North America ranges from 10% to 15%, Iacobelli calls Chrysler’s reduction a “big-time” improvement.

The revelation comes as Chrysler and the United Auto Workers union cut the ribbon on a training center designed to help the auto maker implement Fiat’s World-Class Manufacturing system.

Iacobelli credits WCM with contributing to Chrysler’s absenteeism decline because it promises genuine opportunities for workers to upgrade company practices, while also emphasizing individual accountability.

The UAW has further enhanced the impact of WCM by enthusiastically embracing its methodology. Vice-President General Holiefield, who has bargaining responsibility for Chrysler employees represented by the union, has become a vocal advocate of the system, which was inspired by practices in Japan’s auto industry but developed by Fiat.

Holiefield’s message to UAW members is simple. “Coming to work every day is very important,” he says, adding he tells workers, “nobody does their job better than you. Even though you’ve got others trained, you are magnificent in what you do. I could never do it as well as you.”

The “not-my-job” mentality once spawned by myriad job classifications is waning, Holiefield says. The new mantra: “It’s everybody’s job. Let’s get it done. And tomorrow we’ll all reap the benefits.”

Workers in skilled trades have undergone the most significant attitudinal shift. The UAW is “trying to get them into that mindset and say, ‘We want you doing more than just holding a cup of coffee, waiting on the line to break down,” Holiefield says.

“‘There should be something you should be doing all the while that you’re here that (will) enhance our quality and drive our sales, which will, in turn, give you a greater measure of job security.’”

Iacobelli and Holiefield recount the hectic days of 2009 when the U.S. Treasury Dept. helped engineer Chrysler’s rescue with massive loans and a technology-sharing agreement with Italy-based Fiat. Sergio Marchionne, Fiat’s CEO, threatened to walk away from the deal unless Chrysler and the UAW adopted WCM.

Iacobelli and Holiefield, industry veterans who have seen numerous quality-improvement initiatives similar to WCM, were unfazed by the prospect of its implementation. Until they visited Fiat plants overseas for a close-up look.

“We didn’t understand how deep WCM was until we went to Italy,” Iacobelli says. “We were stunned. The plants in Italy are like hospitals. You can eat off the floor. And it’s not just the paths where the vice presidents walk, it’s the whole place.”

Fiat workers in skilled trades are told to let assemblers conduct routine machine maintenance because they have “bigger fish to fry,” Holiefield says. But this division of labor did not sit well with their North American counterparts at Chrysler.

“They looked at it as work going away,” Iacobelli says. “But the reality was we were adding more work, value-added work, things that they could do to make a difference in the operation.”

Holiefield recalls seeing familiar robots at one Fiat plant in Europe. To save floorspace, the robots were hung upside-down over the workstations they serviced.

“(Fiat employees) just revamped the hydraulic system, and those things were working as though they were standing right-side up,” he says. “That’s what real skill tradesmen should be doing.”

The UAW’s culture has changed right along with Chrysler’s, Holiefield adds. “The circumstances and the situations that we’ve all lived through now have done it for us.”

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