Honda workers to take unpaid days off

Honda Motor Co. Ltd. is starting its new fiscal year by cutting North American production and implementing as many as six unpaid days off through the summer at its U.S. and Canadian facilities.

Spokesman Ron Lietzke said Honda will reduce vehicle production by 62,000 units from May through July, including an 18,000-car cut at the Marysville, Ohio, plant and a 10,000 vehicle reduction at the East Liberty, Ohio, plant. Honda also operates a recently opened assembly plant in Greensburg, Ind.

The automaker is pulling 13 production days off the schedule to better align its inventory with demand. But in a change from other recent reductions, employees will not have the option to come into work and receive pay for as many as six of those days.

Lietzke said employees do have the option of using vacation days on the non-production days to receive pay. On the non-production days that haven’t been designated no-work days, employees will have the choice of working non-production duties and still receive pay.

The number of no-work, no-pay days and when those are designated at each facility will vary, he said, but there will be no more than two scheduled per month to minimize the financial impact to workers. Those days will fall sometime during the following non-production schedule:

• May 1, 8, 15, 19, 22 and 29.

• June 5, 19

• July 6 through 10, the week after the company’s annual summer shutdown.

The changes also affect the Anna Engine Plant and the transmission plant in Russells Point in western Ohio.

Hourly wages will remain unchanged, but bonuses are being reduced and eliminated for both hourly and salaried employees, Lietzke said, declining to share specific cuts. Salaried employees already have taken a pay cut.

Honda also is offering incentives for early retirement for those eligible, and for voluntary quitting for those not at retirement age. Lietzke would not say what those incentives are.

“We remain confident in the long-term prospects of Honda, but we continue to carefully and strategically manage because of what is happening in the marketplace,” Lietzke said. “Regardless of title or job level, each Honda associate is sharing the responsibility. We all need to endure this at this time.”

Honda’s U.S. sales fell 38 percent in February, its biggest drop since a slide began eight months earlier. Sales through the first two months of the year were down 33 percent.

The newest round of production cuts is the fifth in five months for the manufacturer. The previous four cuts removed 204,000 vehicles from its North American plan for fiscal 2009, which ended today. Honda produced 1.25 million vehicles for the fiscal year.

Marysville-based Honda of America Manufacturing employs more than 11,800 workers at assembly and engine plants in and around Ohio, where they produce Honda Accords, Civics, CR-Vs, Elements and Acura TLs and RDXs.