Goodyear to cut plant, 1,100 jobs

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. said on Monday that it plans to close a plant in Tyler, Texas, despite a strike by workers who were upset about the tire maker’s plan to shut down the factory.

The move will eliminate about 1,100 jobs and is part of Goodyear’s strategy to end some of its private label tire business.

The plant, which opened in 1962, has produced approximately 25,000 passenger and light truck tires per day.

More than 12,000 United Steelworkers members in Tyler and 15 other plants in North America went on strike Oct. 5 after months of talks with the world’s third biggest tire maker. No new talks have been scheduled.

The United Steelworkers, which represents Goodyear workers, said the announcement to close the Tyler plant was a slap in the face, particularly because the union took pay cuts, job losses and other concessions in 2000 to help get the company back on track financially.

Goodyear said in June that it wanted to leave parts of the private label tire business and that the decision would mean a reduction in capacity. The company refused to name specific plants.

The Tyler plant mostly makes small passenger tires, a segment that has been under considerable pressure from low cost imports.

•Ford Motor Co. expects North American production to be down 8 percent to 12 percent for the first six months of 2007 from the same period this year as it works to bring manufacturing in line with lower demand for its vehicles.

The estimate by Chief Financial Officer Don Leclair, reported by Automotive News, was confirmed Monday by Ford spokesman Oscar Suris. Production in the second half of next year, Suris said, was expected to be up 5 percent to 10 percent compared with the second half of 2006.

Suris didn’t have production numbers for the first and second half of this year to offer detail on the comparison.

When Ford announced a round of production cuts in August, it said its production plan called for building about 1.8 million vehicles in the first half of 2006 and about 1.3 million vehicles in the second half.

•Airline Emirates said Monday it was canceling an order for 10 Airbus A340 jets and was sending a team of technicians to France to assess the accuracy of promised delivery dates for the repeatedly delayed A380 superjumbo.

The airline, which has ordered 45 of the A380s and is the program’s largest customer, said it would also cancel its options for 10 more of the mid-sized A340s.