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Jeep hiring 1,000 part-time workers in Toledo on Wrangler, Cherokee demand

The new Jeep Cherokee has been quite a success for Chrysler, but its factory workers are getting tired. The automaker has agreed to hire up to 1,000 part-time, temporary employees at its Toledo Assembly Complex where the CUV and Wrangler are built. It will allow the company to keep Jeep production moving, while giving laborers a break.
According to plant manager Chuck Padden in the Toledo Blade, full-time workers are regularly taking on 60 hours a week, and it's beginning to wear on them. "To get them more time off is important to us, to make sure they're refreshed, and can work safely," said Padden.
Chrysler has already hired 380 temporary, part-time workers for the plant, and 50 have been converted to full-time employees. The company is in the process of interviewing the rest of the new hires now and plans to have all 1,000 in place by the summer. They will work between 10 and 30 hours a week mostly on weekends for $15.78 per hour with limited benefits. The temporary positions will last "as long as demand continues for the Jeep Wrangler and the Jeep Cherokee," said Jodi Tinson, Chrysler spokesperson for manufacturing and labor communications, to Autoblog in an email.

A closer look at the 2015 Chrysler 200

When the doors of the Detroit Auto Show open to the public tomorrow, there's no doubt that the Chevy, BMW and Lexus booths will attract plenty of foot traffic with flashy sports cars. But when it comes to relevance as it relates to sales volume and in-market shoppers, the 2015 Chrysler 200 could end up being one of the more important introductions from the show. Positioned in the highly competitive midsize sedan segment, Chrysler has quite the challenge ahead of it, so we asked Andy Love, product chief of the 200, to give us a closer look at the new sedan to see how it will stack up against cars like the Toyota Camry, Ford Fusion and Honda Accord.
All of the pertinent information about the new 200 was revealed during the on-stage introduction, but Love gave us a first-hand look at the sedan's more intricate details. This includes some of the exterior design elements such as the wide use of LED exterior lighting and the strategic placement of the side marker lights, and even interior cues like electronic shifter, which allowed for extra storage space in the center console. Aside from the name, the 2015 200 started from scratch riding on a similar platform as the Dodge Dart and Jeep Cherokee, based on the Alfa Romeo Giulietta.
Scroll down to watch Love talk us through the 2015 Chrysler 200, and you can find more information about it at our original post from earlier in the week.

Bailout dealership cuts did their job as profits surge

Almost five years after US taxpayers bailed out General Motors and Chrysler, a large majority of their slimmed-down dealership networks are posting soaring profits, Bloomberg reports, and contributing to the US auto industry on track this year to deliver 15.4 million vehicles, the most since 16.15 million were delivered in 2007.
Consider another important figure: Bloomberg says that more than 90 percent of GM dealerships are profitable, compared to about half of them in 2008 and 2009. At the start of 2013, GM had 4,355 US dealerships and Chrysler had about 2,600. Compare that with just a few years ago, when GM had 6,246 dealers in 2008, while Chrysler had 3,200 in 2009.
As part of their bankruptcy restructuring, both GM and Chrysler decided that their retail networks contained far too many dealerships and insisted that they be slimmed down. The resultant dealership terminations followed by a rebounding auto market - in part due to better new GM and Chrysler vehicles - have increased the number of sales per dealership to record levels. Many dealers are taking advantage of increasing profits and investing in facility renovations and updates, such as Chrysler dealership owner David Kelleher. He's spending $2 million to expand his store.