SPARTA, Mich. — One mold at a time, Cascade Die Casting Group workers in Sparta create the metal part for sideview mirrors.
It’s a process the company first began to do in 1978, but Pat Greene says their future looks uncertain.
“There's no clear path forward for us right now,” said Greene, the CEO of Cascade Die Casting. “We don't know for sure what's going to happen today, tomorrow, or next week.”
Greene blames the trouble on the United Auto Workers strike against General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis. Seventy-five percent of the company’s business comes from the auto industry.
“We have content on the Jeep Wrangler,” said Greene. “We sell that to our customer who then sells it to Jeep, and when the strike happened, they immediately canceled their orders and said, ‘We don't need any more parts now until this comes back to production.’”
Greene says that almost immediately, the work stoppage dropped their output by 15-20 percent, a significant amount, although it's better than what they initially predicted when they thought the union may strike all of Detroit’s automakers.
Cascade Die Casting implemented a “no overtime” policy to make up for the loss in business, but if additional plants close, they plan to ask employees to volunteer for layoffs.
“It has been less severe because of the way the strike has rolled out one plant at a time, but it still hurts,” said Greene.
More than 15 percent of manufacturing jobs in Kent and Ottawa counties supply components for automakers, according to Paul Isely, an associate dean at Grand Valley State University’s Seidman College of Business. He calls the strike’s uncertainty the bigger problem for West Michigan than the work stoppage itself.
“We’re actually getting to the point where certain product lines may end and they'll end without us having expected that,” said Isely. “We’re going to have new product launches that will be delayed that we may have been spending money to prepare for so even when this ends, at this point, the uncertainty created by ‘Are we going to strike this? Or are we going to strike that?’ has changed the investment patterns, and will lead to problems for our suppliers as we go into the next product year.”
An analysis from Anderson Economic Group, based in East Lansing, estimates that the first four weeks of the strike cost the auto parts industry $2.67 billion in lost wage an earnings.
“We’ve entered the danger zone for many suppliers, and more than one production line,” the analysis says. “Without a settlement soon, a plausible restart with higher costs will likely lead to some permanent losses of production, and suppliers that will need financial assistance to return to operation.”
The effect of a full blown strike locally would be up to $150 million a week in lost economic output. Isely says the area has not seen that at this point.
“We’re seeing that this is starting to escalate, where the suppliers, and particularly the smaller suppliers, so if they're below 50 [employees], they don't have a big cushion to handle it shutting down,” said Isely. “We're seeing the smaller suppliers starting to get on the flagged lists of worrying about whether they will exist in the year.”
Greene hopes both sides strike a deal before it’s too late.
“Please reach an agreement soon because it is starting to impact us and others like us,” said Greene. “There's a lot of people that rely on the on the automotive industry in the state of Michigan, as well as across the country.”
