Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. has told employees in a company
newsletter that it may idle 15 percent of its North American tire-making
capacity this year. But Goodyear spokesman Chuck Sinclair said the
company had no immediate plans to shut any North American tire plants.
He said the goal is to shift production of some tires to countries with
lower labor costs, and said the company isn't focused on any
specific amount of cuts.
"Our position is all of our North American tire plants must be
globally competitive," he said. "If they aren't
competitive globally, our No. 1 desire is to fix them." The company
operates 13 tire plants in the United States and Canada with a capacity
of 367,600 tires a day. It employs 95,000 people overall.
The newsletter came out two weeks after Goodyear began cutting 700
white-collar positions, about half of them in Akron, to save $80 million
a year.
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