The war in Ukraine further aggravates the supply crisis in the automobile sector. Seat has moved to the company unions its intention to apply at the Martorell (Barcelona) plant another Temporary Employment Regulation File (ERTE) from the middle of this month until December 23. would affect of input to about 850 employees each day due to supply difficulties for semiconductors and other components.
Sources from the company and the unions have explained to Efe that this afternoon they have met to talk about how these supply problems will affect vehicle production. Seat sources have assured Efe that the ERTE proposed by the company will be applied, in the first place, on a voluntary basis, like the previous ones, and that the conditions will be determined during the negotiation with the unions.
In previous ERTEs, the company included all the company’s production staff, so it is assumed that this time it will follow the same model: cover as much as possible of the ERTE with volunteers from the outset and then fill in the rest of the quota. fixed using the set of the production template. Due to component supply problems, Seat will temporarily suspend the night shift of line 2which manufactures the Seat/Cupra León and the Cupra Formentor, which will affect some 850 employees daily.
Thus, the ERTE would affect that number of employees daily, although the incidence may be greater if more production days are canceled in any of the Martorell production lines. The president of the SEAT works council, Matías Carnero, explained to Efe that the company is proposes to cancel the weekends of September as production days and not enable the weekends of October either.
The unions hope that the new ERTE will have the same conditions as the previous ones. In a joint statement, UGT and CCOO have stressed that they will try to “minimize the negative impact on the affected workforce”, claiming that volunteers have preference for entry into the ERTE, a salary supplement to improve the unemployment benefit they receive or the Voluntary exclusion of those over 57 years of age.
However, these unions have already advanced They see the term for the entry into force of the ERTE “hasty”, because “there is no time to manage all the direct and indirect mobility that an ERTE of these characteristics causes,” they consider. The Martorell car factory, the largest in Spain, has chained several ERTEs since the outbreak of covid-19, first, and also due to the global shortage of microchips, later.
The Seat factory has maintained its normal activity this week and has been working in August, even with some additional shifts to recover part of the production lost in the previous months. Seat sources have also stressed that despite the ERTE, forced by the “global shortage in semiconductor supply”which affects the entire automotive industry, the demand for the models of the group’s brands remains at “very high levels”.
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