Forest river plant explosion

Edd505 wrote:
RV companies are crying for help, the employees will have work if they want it.

They're not exactly crying for it. During the same week Forest River laid off 50-60 at the plant that went up in smoke, Jayco laid off 30% of their production labor.

50-60 does not sound like much for Forest River to lay off until you take into account those 50 were at one plant which makes one brand, the Vibe. 30% at Jayco is a significant layoff as well.

These lay offs come at a time the RV Industry typically is scrambling, hiring, and running overtime to fill orders from all the RV shows held during the fall and winter.

RV companies are crying for help, the employees will have work if they want it.

garyp4951 wrote:

goducks10 wrote:
Meth lab explosion?
Drugs are a big issue at FR
https://abc57.com/news/Forest-River-violations-top-250000-workers-blame-drug-use-and-poor-safety-practices?fbclid=IwAR0z5bXWg9taWr1ds0dj_BPvhAor_uaMHR0vg_ogtqYW_CJDiwbpFxSJdug

Its pretty sad when you can't drug test employees for fear of loosing production goals.
Maybe they need to relocate the factories, but where would you go.

How about Arizona? Little to no weather issues. Right to work state. I-8, I-10, I-40. BNSF mainline along 40, UP mainline in the south and through PHX. Lower cost of living. LOTS of empty commercial spaces around. Lots of construction workers already here.

Lyle

Pretty much all the manufacturers flooded their lots in the fall and over the winter with units just waiting to be shipped out while working 40 hour weeks. Now the lots are full, the dealers are taking some to fill empty spaces with discount agreements from the manufacturers and sales in a lot of the US are slow on the uptick due to a slow warmup from winter. So, there’s most likely why the layoff.
I hauled discount units for the last three weeks. We had over 500 units in our storage lot and we are a smaller transport company.
Niece works in accounting at a dealer and she said the sales are beginning to roll through pretty good but ramp up back to the manufacturers will probably be delayed for a bit longer due to ripple effect.
As far as this particular fire goes, FR can have those lines up and running again in a matter of days in other locations. They have plenty of space to do it.

SidecarFlip wrote:

JKJavelin wrote:

Tom/Barb wrote:
4 or 5 people working at the time of the fire, business must be pretty slow.

The general workforce is normally done by lunchtime due to incentives at most Indiana rv factories and the fire was reported a few hours later.

Those 'incentives' are what kill the quality. Getting it done and getting it done right are 2 different things.

Typically, in this type of an arrangement, the workers have more incentive to produce a quality product as warranty claims and quality check failures results in deductions in pay incentives. Regular hourly workers see no penalty in inferior results except in performance evaluations.

Its a shame about the fire. In the past I looked at some Forest river campers and decided not to go with them but The new Riverstone fifth wheel line is impressive.

Karma

Let's see...no railing or fall protection? What you can't see in that picture is the scaffolding on all sides of the rig. In fact, you can kind of see it in the background. Why don't you post the link to that picture and maybe we can see it more clearly.

Shorts, sleeveless shirts, soft sole shoes...none of those things are safety violations.

Factory safety rules are far different than construction safety rules.

garyp4951 wrote:


Its pretty sad when you can't drug test employees for fear of loosing production goals.
Maybe they need to relocate the factories, but where would you go.

Chicago isn’t far. They could move to the East Side or Hegewisch and hire industrious, enterprising Polish and Mexican Americans and build the things right. But those people won’t work for peanuts and will demand respect.

Maybe management did a Gus and George job.