Chrysler Bankruptcy's Ripple Effect Starting in Cleveland

The Cleveland Faurecia plant makes car seats for the Dodge Nitro.

Chrysler’s bankruptcy is bad news for Cleveland. MPB’s Cari Gervin explains.

The French automotive supplier Faurecia opened a plant in Cleveland in 2005. It employed more than 200 workers to build seat frames, primarily for the Jeep Wrangler and Dodge Nitro.

Both those cars are manufactured by Chrysler, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last Thursday. On Friday, Faurecia laid off three-fourths of its Cleveland workforce – 150 employees.

Judson Thigpen is the executive director of the Cleveland-Bolivar Chamber of Commerce. He said he feels like Faurecia is committed to the Cleveland plant but that doesn’t make it any easier.

“Obviously every time you lose employees, it’s fairly devastating to the community. We’ve been watching Faurecia for a number of months now and have been in close contact with them. With the automotive economy the way it is, we, you know, have not been surprised by any of these.”

And Cleveland’s not alone. Out of the 17,000 manufacturing jobs the state has lost this year, almost 20 percent have been related to transportation manufacturing.

Mary Willoughby at the Mississippi Department of Employment Security says the business in car parts and boat building is hurting.

“Transportation equipment manufacturing has decreased 12.1 percent over the year, from March of 2008 to March of 2009.”

Willoughby says she can’t offer a prediction as to how many more job loses there could be in this sector of this economy. For MPB News, I’m Cari Gervin.