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Shirley Weber walked the rally line outside Chrysler LLC’s Fenton minivan plant Wednesday not only for her own job, but for the jobs of two of her children.

Weber, an assembly line worker at the minivan plant, has worked for the automaker since 1984. Two of her three children also work at the Fenton operations, one son in the minivan plant and another son in the neighboring pickup plant.

Now, as Chrysler has reduced the pickup plant to one shift and is about to shutter the minivan plant on Oct. 31, Weber and other members of the United Auto Workers are lobbying to keep their jobs in Fenton. Those efforts continued Wednesday, as workers carried signs promoting the local plant and captured the attention of drivers along Interstate 44.

About 900 people attended the rally, said Joe Shields, president of UAW Local 110. The local union represents workers at the minivan plant who make the Dodge Grand Caravan, Dodge Caravan cargo van and an export version of the Chrysler Town & Country.

Weber, who works in the paint repair part of the assembly line, said the plant offers "very good jobs" that would be tough to lose.

Ford has already left the area, when it closed its Hazelwood plant, said Weber, 64, of St. Peters. "Now, if Chrysler leaves, it’ll be hard in the state" to find good-paying assembly jobs.

Weber and other workers said they hope help comes from politicians. And on Wednesday, a few local officials offered their support to the workers.

Both St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and County Executive Charlie Dooley talked to the crowd. Slay said the recent push by Chrysler and other automakers to secure up to $50 billion in federal loans for retooling plants shows an interest in reinventing the industry and its products. But the changes at the Fenton plants, Slay said, show Chrysler is "also trying to reinvent the auto worker" and take jobs outside the United States pay day loans. Slay said the minivan plant closing "will have an

unbelievable impact on this region."

On June 30, Chrysler announced the idling and said minivan production will be consolidated at its plant in Windsor, Ontario. The automaker also said it would reduce the number of shifts at the adjacent pickup plant, where the Dodge Ram is made, from two to one.

Chrysler employs about 1,500 workers at the minivan plant.

In the weeks after the announcement, workers protested the changes by gathering outside Chrysler’s headquarters in Auburn Hills, Mich., and by running advertisements.

Chrysler spokesman Ed Saenz said Wednesday that the automaker knew about the rally.

"We can certainly sympathize with what our employees are going though there," he said. "But the decisions were not made lightly, and were made on market conditions."

Shields said the union members understand the economic conditions, "but what we can’t understand is them shifting our work up there" to Canada.

Since the Canadian facility opened in 1983, it has been the lead plant for minivan production. Workers at the Fenton plant started building minivans in 1995, and that location has been used to help with production overflow. Since January, it has been running only one shift.

"There are business case differences between the two operations that make it prudent to operate the three shifts in Windsor" versus shifts in Fenton, Chrysler’s Saenz said. He declined to elaborate.

atablac@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8140

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