Chrysler to idle 1 shift at suburban St. Louis plant

FENTON, Mo. (AP) -- After much speculation that DaimlerChrysler would cut jobs at the suburban St. Louis plant where it makes Dodge Ram pickups, the company instead decided to idle a shift at an adjacent plant that makes minivans.

Chrysler on Wednesday announced a massive restructuring plan that calls for about 13,000 workers in North America to lose their jobs over the next three years in an effort to return to profitability by next year.

A plant in Newark, Del., will close in 2009, while shifts will be cut in Warren, Mich., and at Fenton. A parts distribution center near Cleveland also will be closed.

Sales of pickups have dropped as gasoline prices have risen in recent years, prompting speculation that Chrysler might cut shifts or even close its North assembly plant in Fenton, where the Dodge Rams are made.

Instead, the company in 2008 will eliminate a shift at the South assembly plant, which makes Dodge and Chrysler minivans. The plant employs about 2,850 workers. It wasn't immediately clear how many would lose their jobs.

The North plant was spared over the Warren, Mich., plant, which also builds Ram pickups.

Chad Robertson, 30, hauls finished trucks from the Fenton plant to dealerships. He and co-workers listened nervously to the radio Wednesday morning, convinced the North plant would be closed.

"It was better than we expected," Robertson said. "We heard from dealers that trucks weren't moving."

The cutback in Fenton comes 14 months after Chrysler's December 2005 announcement of a $1 billion investment in the Fenton plants to convert them into flexible manufacturing facilities, or plants that can produce more than one vehicle in a single line.

The St. Louis region also took a hit last year when Ford Motor Co. closed its assembly plant in Hazelwood, leaving about 1,000 autoworkers without jobs. The Hazelwood plant was among 14 Ford shuttered as part of a restructuring plan of its own.

Under the Chrysler plan, 11,000 production workers -- 9,000 in the U.S. and 2,000 in Canada -- will lose their jobs over the next three years, and 2,000 salaried jobs also will be cut -- 1,000 this year and 1,000 in 2008.

The job losses are the latest in a yearlong series of devastating cuts in the ailing domestic auto industry, which likely will lose more than 100,000 jobs in all.

DaimlerChrysler said its fourth-quarter earnings plunged 40 percent on weaker demand at the Chrysler unit, where sales fell 7 percent. DaimlerChrysler's profit fell to $761 million, or 74 cents per share, as revenue slipped to $53.7 billion.