Volkswagen gives collective vacation due to lack of semiconductors

Volkswagen will give collective vacations of 20 days to production workers at the São Bernardo do Campo plant, in ABC, due to the lack of components. Metalworkers will be out of the factory from May 9 to 28.

According to the ABC Metalworkers Union, the measure should affect around 2,500 workers. This is the fifth time that the company is obliged to give collective vacations since the beginning of the pandemic.

For the coordinator of the union, José Roberto Nogueira da Silva, in addition to semiconductors, other components and parts began to be missing and affect production at the automaker.

“It was no different from what is happening in other factories in the country. There is demand for production, but with the shortage of parts the factory cannot meet the final consumer. We are looking forward to the resumption as soon as possible”, he says.

According to the entity, Volkswagen has around 8,200 workers, 4,500 of which are in production. The factory currently produces 800 vehicles a day.

Volkswagen confirmed the adoption of collective vacations at the São Bernardo do Campo plant, without giving further details.

The factory in São Paulo’s ABC had returned to operate in two shifts in March, after having had activities reduced mainly by the lack of semiconductors.

In November 2021, the Anchieta plant was also forced to cut its production pace to one shift and put about a thousand employees on lay-off, as the temporary suspension of contracts is called.

To the German newspaper “Boersen-Zeitung”, a company executive said in April that the supply of semiconductors should improve this year and throughout 2023, but should only normalize in the middle of the decade.

“We see a lack of supply in 2022 that will probably decrease a little in the third or fourth quarter. The situation should improve in 2023, but the structural problem will not be fully resolved,” said the executive.

Since the pandemic, different manufacturers have been forced to stop their production lines because of the lack of components. The automotive sector is one of the main affected, but the lack of semiconductors has also impacted other segments, such as electronics.

The recent outbreak of Covid-19 in China continues to affect production chains. Several semiconductor and automobile manufacturing lines have been forced to suspend or reduce production in Shanghai and neighboring regions because of virus controls and a lack of supplies.

An electric vehicle maker warned on April 14 that Chinese automakers may have to halt production in May if shutdowns persist in the Shanghai area.

A survey by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China found that 30% of companies surveyed said they had been hit by supply disruptions. The American Chamber of Commerce in China found that 57.3% of companies surveyed were affected by the outages.

With Caixin