Ford Motor Company readies for return of workers

Ford Motor Company and other US automakers are preparing for the reopening of their plants next week.

And Kyle Lenart says he and his fellow assembly-line workers are ready for it.

"I feel more safer in here at work than I do going out in the general public right now. And I'm ready for it all to come back to normal," Lenart, who works at Ford's Rawsonville plant in Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, said Wednesday.

Lenart is volunteering to make ventilators at the plant outside Detroit that, beginning Monday, will phase back into producing automotive components.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced last week that auto and other manufacturing workers can return to the job.

Factories must adopt measures to protect their workers, including daily entry screening and, once they are available, the use of no-touch thermometers.

Those measures already are in effect at Rawsonville.

"I think people have adjusted real well to it. Come in, put your mask on, put your glasses on or face shield. Get right to work," said Stephon (steh-FON') Robinson, a team leader who oversees workers on the subassembly line of ventilator production.

General Motors and Fiat Chrysler also will reopen plants starting Monday.

Shaun Whitehead, the director of automatic transmission operations at Ford, says she and others with the company have been calling workers to touch base with them ahead of the restart and explain "what life is going to now be like when you come into work, because life is completely different than it was in March.

"And we all have to get used to that," Whitehead said.

Detroit automakers employ about 150,000 factory workers in the United States alone. Auto plants have been shut since mid-March because of the coronavirus outbreak. At least 25 employees at auto facilities represented by the United Auto Workers have died as a result of COVID-19, although it's not known if they were infected at work.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death.