To: [Delphi] Kokomo Site Employees
From: Mike Moran, Facility Manager, Kokomo Operations
Subject: Modification of Housekeeping Services to Improve Kokomo Site
Competitiveness
Modification of Housekeeping Services to Improve Kokomo Site Competitiveness
January 8, 2009
After detailed efforts to analyze and confront the housekeeping costs at the
Kokomo site, local management and the UAW have jointly established a plan to
significantly improve the site’s competitive position in the area of
custodial service costs. The resulting plan establishes a smaller group of
housekeeping personnel focused on core activities. Cost savings will be
immediate and will be achieved through productivity improvements and
reduction in the housekeeping work load.
The following elements are key components of the operating plan that will
affect all employees as soon as Monday, January 12:
* Consistent with the closure of Plant 9, Plant 10 and ITC, and in line with
the site population, several restrooms will be closed. Notices will be
placed on the doors of the restrooms that will be closed and the locations
for alternate options will be posted
* Incidental housekeeping will be performed by all employees. This includes
emptying of one’s trash basket into an area container and replacing trash
basket liners, and miscellaneous cleaning with a spray disinfectant and
wipes in one’s immediate work area. Supplies needed for these activities
(replacement liners, wipes, etc.), will be available in a manner consistent
with each area’s process for distributing general supplies. Maps indicating
the area trash collection containers will soon be distributed to area
personnel.
* Cleaning frequencies will be reviewed and extended where practicable.
Your support of this initiative is appreciated as the site takes this
significant step to improve our competitiveness. Further detailed
information will be provided soon.
Mike Moran
Facility Manager,
Kokomo Operations
Furthermore, employees are hereby instructed to please urinate on each other to reduce water costs associated with flushing. Thank you.
And for new employees, we will issue colostomy bags to increase efficiency and further reduce dependence on bathroom maintenance.
Not to mention they haven’t even bothered salting the employee parking lot after our ice, sleet, and snow fell. Walking to one’s car is an exercise in not falling on your ass. I’m waiting for them to post the bulletin board with our “weekly chores”. Why did I get a college education again? Oh that’s right, so the only garbage I would have to empty is in my home.
Not to mention they haven’t even bothered salting the employee parking lot after our ice, sleet, and snow fell.
“While we applaud your efforts at cost-savings we must ask you to redouble your efforts as we have experienced increased losses in other areas…”
–Consistent with the closure of Plant 9, Plant 10 and ITC, and in line with
the site population, several restrooms will be closed. Notices will be
placed on the doors of the restrooms that will be closed and the locations
for alternate options will be posted
Why is this unreasonable?? Closing the bathrooms in plants where people aren’t working sounds efficient to me.
cntrlwiz:
Whether or not it’s unreasonable (and I agree with you that closing unneeded bathrooms is a good idea), it’s a sure sign of the cratering of Delphi’s fortunes.
As eamiller said, highly profitable companies don’t have employees wiping down their desks with disinfectant to save money on cleaning.
I work in a big 3 facility that has taken light bulbs out of the ceiling fixtures to save on electricity. Now the furnace probably runs longer!
I’d say that closing restrooms isn’t particularly unreasonable if those plants are indeed devoid of people. They however are not devoid of people. We will now have a serious throughput issue.
It’s really just a big “Oh crap!” kind of move, which I guess is sort of appropriate.
I fail to see why reporting the closing of bathrooms is news worthy. Next will be every other flush. Bring your own TP, use the Shell down the street. Weeeee, were closing bathrooms, let’s call the press, Betty get in touch with our Delphi correspondent, this is huge.
There are some other items that need flushing. Besides what does housekeeping do? They clean the bathrooms, empty garbage then, the rest of the day or night whatever shift they are on they watch tv, text, or play video games. Even housekeeping is not being held accountable for completing their job functions. Perhaps they could get Battenberg and Dawes to come help clean up the mess they left.
This sounds like a crappy situation for them.
Not to mention they haven’t even bothered salting the employee parking lot after our ice, sleet, and snow fell. Walking to one’s car is an exercise in not falling on your ass. I’m waiting for them to post the bulletin board with our “weekly chores”. Why did I get a college education again? Oh that’s right, so the only garbage I would have to empty is in my home.
Try living in Seattle. Even with a college degree there’s still ice everywhere. :p
*blames Greg Nichols*
At an office I know of, they have reduced cleaning expenses. They used to empty deskside wastebaskets nightly. Now it is every second or even third night.
Empty coffee cups, wrappers, trash of all kinds overflows now, littering the areas immediately adjacent to people’s desks.
Wouldn’t firing the MBAs who came up with that ridiculous management talk and spent days in meeting in order to close up bathrooms be fired instead in order to save money?
And as an MBA myself, I know exactly the type of guys who wrote this…
Heh. Well I don’t think closing bathrooms is that big a deal but I love the happy face spin they put on it.
I did some work once for an aerospace company that was having troubles and trying to save money. They decided to cut back and even eliminate health insurance to salaried employees. I thought it would be a downer but it’s actually a good thing to loose your health insurance, you’ll be better off!
Reminds me of when our secretaries retired, both within 3 months of each other. In order to “save” money they didn’t hire new ones for several months (general hiring freeze in place). For several months we had no secretaries and instead we had engineers answering the phones, doing the filing, etc. As I was about the only one willing and able to do such tasks, I was basically a secretary making engineer’s wages for those months. Explain to me how paying twice as much money to an engineer as a secretary to do a secretary’s job saves any money? If Delphi’s engineers don’t have enough to keep them busy, rather than shifting them to maintenance/cleaning, why not fire them and keep the maintenance people for less money?