The Effects of Chrysler Shutting Down Its Newark Plant

Over 10,500 Chrysler workers are now out of a job. Chrysler has closed 4 production plants in Sterling Heights, Newark, Toledo and Belvidere, in part because of their recent lawsuit against Plastech Engineered Products. In order to protect what Chrysler wants, Plastech has recently filled for bankruptcy, and is looking to hold of litigation until they reorganize their company, thus Chrysler is said to be taking a huge loss themselves.

These workers who have been laid off have not only lost a job, some of them have lost life-long friends, and even the opportunity at a nice retirement because now they will have to start over again. In this article you will hear about the things happening to a 47 year old man, who wishes to remain annonymous, and who was recently laid off of a Newark Chrysler plant.

1. Did you anticipate the plant you worked at being closed?
I think that this has been a long time coming although most of my co-workers and I did not anticipate our plant being one of the ones that would be closed. It's a shame, that the two companies were not able to work out the problems they were having, this is going to be affecting more plants for sure.

2. How will this affect you personally?
On a personal level this will hurt me because I don't think it will be easy to find another job as quickly as I need to. Most companies aren't looking for 47 year old men to hire, they're looking for young, straight out of college males.

3. How will it affect your family?
Well I have two kids in middle school about to go into high school, and my wife is a stay-at-home wife, so my family was pretty dependent on my check. I don't know yet how this will be affecting us, but we have a nice savings account, thus we will be able to get by for at least 3 months without a problem.

4. Will you be receiving monetary compensation?
Hopefully, I think this is the least we deserve. I'm hoping to at least get one or two paychecks in advance, but who knows what they plan to give us. If we don't get much, you can be sure that there will be protesting though.

5. What are you going to miss the most about your job?
What I will miss the most about working at the plant are probably my co-workers. I've worked for this company for approximately 10 years. During those 10 years I've met some great people whom I've become really close to. One of my co-workers is my daughters God-parent.

6. What are you plans now?
Well for now I am going to be joining up with an local staffing agency who has gotten some friends of mine pretty good jobs in the past. Hopefully that will bring about a permanent job quickly, and if not at least some part-time jobs. I cannot stay at home not working for more than two weeks, that's for sure. The money needs to start coming in again, so my plans are to make that happen as soon as possible. Who knows maybe this will be a good thing and some of the people who were laid off, like myself, will find better jobs than the one's we had.