Former Janesville Plant Workers Face Another Loss At Lordstown Plant
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When General Motors announced it would idle the Janesville, Wisconsin, plant in 2008, the automaker gave 120 workers an ultimatum: make a 500-mile relocation move to Ohio for work at the Lordstown plant, or face a loss of benefits, including no additional unemployment pay.
Those workers took the deal and began to thrive at the Lordstown plant as it began work around the clock to build the hot-selling Chevrolet Cruze compact car. Today, they face more misfortune. Automotive News (subscription required) reported those employees sensed a familiar feeling from their Janesville days as the sedan market began to contract.
The Wisconsin plant assembled large SUVs as the economy crashed in the late 2000s and fuel prices spiked past $4 per gallon. Lordstown was a safe haven, a plant that built fuel-efficient small cars that ran three shifts to keep up with demand. But, as the economy recovered, consumers once again turned to SUVs, a flood of new crossover models, and trucks.
GM slowly began picking off shifts at Lordstown, first the third shift, then the second shift. Last month, GM announced it would idle the Lordstown plant ahead of its planned closure.
The story that will likely play out in the Warren, Ohio, area where Lordstown is situated will be very similar to Janesville. The former Wisconsin plant was tied to numerous businesses that supplied one customer: the GM plant. Already, we’ve seen one Ohio supplier announce it will close its doors when the Lordstown plant goes idle in March. Many other jobs are indirectly tied to the plant, and the city will need to brace for the recovery effort.
“The recovery process is painful, and there is no easy, quick or singular solution,” said James Otterstein, economic development manager for the Rock County Development Alliance in Wisconsin. “Plus, the recovery will not resolve underlying socioeconomic issues that already exist. Therefore, not everyone will experience the recovery’s lift in the same manner.”
Otterstein helped oversee the redevelopment in the area affected by the Janesville closure, and Lordstown will likely look to the area to see how officials handled GM’s exit 10 years ago. We’ll have a clearer picture of Lordstown’s future by next September when the UAW works on a new labor agreement with GM.
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This Lordstown plant idle is in no way like 2008 Janesville or Shreveport. Gas prices are low, cars and SUVs and crossovers are selling at record levels, still over 17million this year. GM is still making record profits, high transaction prices, the executives are making 10s of millions, and they are buying back a record amount of stock. The economy is at an all time high, even with the shakes going on right now. We have a president and government officials pushing for USA made products and manufacturing. These plant idles are GMs way of trying to get leverage in the contract bargaining. They know the aren’t dealing with Cindy Estrada, who plays dead in negotiations. They know the workers in the US are ready to strike. They setup Lordstown to fail this time by taking away the Cruze they build, out of the Mexican and Canadian markets, and letting Mexico build the hatchback which is over a third of sales. That plant made sacrifices by combining unions and agreeing to the electric vehicle memorandum of understanding, which dictates they will accept lower wages to build electric vehicles that gm can’t even sell. If the company was wanting the future to be electric, they wouldn’t have killed the volt or low emission vehicles, let’s get real. They are jealous of tesla, they just will not win against them. This companies future should be in doubt by all investors, because none of their plans are working out and they are behind on cutting products and bringing products to market in a timely manner. And they are gonna feel the wrath of America if they keep building products outside the USA
Lordstown never agreed to an electric car memorandum of lower pay. There are now pay tiers at Lordstown. That was Orion that signed that agreement.
GM has had leverage already with more plants than they needed.
These plants and Lordstown was just due to a car dying before it’s expected time and GM not going into old habits of building cars that are not selling to be dumped on fleets.
GM likes the local at Lordstown and that may save the plant but first they need to wait for an appropriated product to be placed there.
When the Cruze was awarded to Lords town they were at three shift. Sedans were stiill doing fine. Two shifts were already killed so it was not a surprise to anyone,
So many people on the web either think they know what happened or they tie it to an agenda or political reason they want to try to justify it.
The plant just had the wrong product at the wrong time nothing more nothing less.
As for Oshawa GM and their Union have been at odds for the last 20 years. GM in this case GM has other plants like Lordstown that will be better to work with in the future.
This is a common thing and far from the first line being killed with no replacment product ready to go in at the time of the shut down. Spring Hill went through this and today they are building SUV models and even exporting them. They also supply many engines including the coming Blazer engines To be exported.
So drop the GM hate, the pro union propaganda, the pro and anti Trump agendas etc. this is nothing more than addressing market changes that will need to addressed.
These are far from the last sedans to die more will die soon.
As for the line folks most know line work is up and down as they hav3 experienced this many times.
My expectation is Lordstown will survive. The local is liked, the location is prime and the plants is older but not ancient. Right now it comes down to GM getting a new model ready for market then negotiate with the local to win the contract. None of this can be discussed or promised at this point but it should happen once the product is ready to be announced.
As for the build USA or pay thinking. Sorry that no longer works. People think with their wallets and buy imports or American built cars from foreign MFGs. They don’t care. No need to get mad at GM.
Everyone wants to be rich but they all want to shop Harbor Frieght, Walmart and Costco. They want to make the high wages but not pay the price to support them. Sorry it just does not work that way.
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