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Salaried employees have been asked to take four weeklong holidays this year, including one this week. Those employees were asked to either use their personal vacation time or take unpaid time off, said Jeff Klei, president of Continental's North American operations.
Employees also have taken mandatory pay cuts this year, a measure Klei said is a temporary effort to conserve cash amid a global slowdown in automobile sales.
The four weeklong furloughs have been implemented throughout all of Continental's North American units, including its corporate headquarters in Michigan, Klei said.
Continental's Newport News unit assembles, tests and packages auto parts for companies like General Motors, Ford and Chrysler at a facility near Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport.
The plant has been battered with layoffs over the past two years, reducing its work force by more than a third. Since January 2008, the Newport News facility has cut more than 220 jobs.
Avoiding further job cuts was part of the motivation for asking salaried workers to take the pay cuts and furloughs, a company spokeswoman said.
Other Continental plants in the U.S. and Canada have been shuttered amid the turmoil in the auto industry, including manufacturing centers in South Carolina and Alabama.
Despite the string of plant closures, continuing uncertainty in the auto industry and local layoffs, Continental's Newport News plant is not in danger of shutting down, Klei said.
"Quite the opposite. We still plan to put additional money into it, as we announced not too long ago," he said.
In December, the company announced it would relocate the capacity and product lines from its South Carolina facility to Newport News, accounting for a total of 894 new and existing jobs and an investment of $194 million to expand the plant.
In exchange for a combination state-city incentives package worth up to $32 million, Continental agreed to several provisions, including meeting benchmarks for maintaining and creating a certain number of jobs.
For example, if the company does not have 576 people employed full time at the Newport News facility by March 31, it has to return half the state money based on a specific formula. Likewise, if Continental does not maintain the previous employment level of 576, doesn't create new jobs and invest a certain amount, it will not receive city incentive grants.
After the latest round of cuts, Continental employs just more than 400 workers in Newport News.
Klei said the company is confident that production levels will improve as the economy begins to rebound.
Production lines "are picking up," Klei said. The federal "cash for clunkers" program "was a huge boost to our production lines, and we're now starting to see signs of recovery."
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