A deal tentatively agreed between General Motors and the United Auto Workers would allow the automaker to close at least two more plants, according to a news agency report on Monday.
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The plants are in Michigan and Indiana and GM possibly could shut down several other facilities, the Associated Press (AP), said, citing a detailed copy of the agreement.
The news agency said the moves are the downside of job security pledges that the UAW won in the negotiations, including commitments for new products at 16 plants. About 74,000 hourly GM workers will vote on the pact starting this week, with the final count due by 10 October.
The report said Gregg Shotwell, a GM worker and frequent critic of the UAW, posted most of the contract details on the internet, telling AP he received the agreement from a local union official who attended a Friday meeting in Detroit. The Associated Press has since confirmed its accuracy through an anonymous union leader.
The report said the agreement would let GM sell or close a stamping plant in Indianapolis and close an engine plant in Livonia, in suburban Detroit. According to the report, work at the Indianapolis stamping operation would continue or be reallocated to another GM plant “until such time as the plant can be sold to an outside buyer.”
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By GlobalDataGM will study keeping the plant, which has a workforce of 850, but if it is not sold or kept, it will be closed “no sooner than December 2011,” the document was reported to have said.
Livonia, which now employs about 300, would remain open until the end of its current product life cycle, which ends in 2010, the Associated Press said.
“The national parties will jointly explore opportunities for current Livonia seniority employees,” the document reportedly said.
Citing the document, the Associated Press said a stamping plant in Flint, Michigan – a city ravaged by previous GM closures documented in the film ‘Roger and Me’ by native Michael Moore – and a small powertrain operation in Parma, Ohio, near Cleveland, also may be in jeopardy. The document said only that the UAW and GM would explore opportunities for current Flint employees, AP added.
The document also said no future powertrain products would be allocated to Parma, which also has a stamping operation that will continue with new generation products, the news agency said.
The document also identifies as closing several smaller sites or factories that GM had previously said were going to be idled, AP noted.
However, the Flint North engine plant will gain a new facility under the agreement, the report said. GM will build three “lean, agile flex engine modules” at a new site near the plant which could build as many as 1,200 four- and six-cylinder engines per day.
Under the agreement, the Associated Press said, GM at present has no future product for the Orion Township assembly plant, which now makes the Pontiac G6, beyond 2013 but says both automaker and union will evaluate opportunities for future products. The document also says GM plans to transfer Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice roadster production from Wilmington, Delaware, to Bowling Green, Kentucky, after 2011.
“No future product allocation has been identified beyond the life of the current agreement,” the document said of Wilmington, according to AP.
AP said it had tried to obtain comment from both GM and UAW but noted that, in the past, GM has refused to comment on the agreement until the ratification vote is complete.
“This isn’t a very genuine job security agreement,” Shotwell told the news agency. “The UAW didn’t win anything. The plants that are allowed to stay operating were already allowed to stay open.”
But union leaders at other factories that received new products reportedly disagreed with Shotwell’s assessment.
Dave Green, president of one of two locals [UAW branches] in Lordstown, Ohio, told the Associated Press his plant got a commitment to build a new generation of GM small cars out of the deal – the company previously would not say what would be built at the plant near Cleveland after its current products, the Chevrolet Cobalt and Pontiac G5, go out of production at the end of the 2009 model year.
GM committed to building current or existing products at 16 of its 18 US assembly plants, according to the UAW’s summary of the contract, AP added.
