General Motors Plants Struggling To Fill Temporary Positions
75
Sponsored Links
General Motors is struggling to fill temporary part-time positions at its Flint Assembly plant in Michigan and Fort Wayne Assembly plant in Indiana – both of which build the automaker’s hugely popular and highly profitable full-size pickup trucks.
According to The Detroit Free Press, GM is looking to hire 450 temp workers at Flint Assembly and another 275 at Fort Wayne. However, UAW Local 595 Shop Chairman Eric Welter told the publication that he’s only been receiving around 22 to 25 applicants from a placement agency that GM uses to funnel workers to Flint Assembly. The automaker also held a job fair for the Fort Wayne Assembly plant last month, but it only resulted in around 60 new hires – a figure that UAW Local 2209 shop chairman Rich Letourneau says is not even close to the 275 bodies the plant needs “just to keep running.”
“We’re looking to hire temps like crazy, we just can’t get them,” LeTourneau told the Free Press this week. “Nobody wants to come to work here.”
2020 Silverado HD at Flint Assembly
A temporary part-time position at a GM assembly plant pays $16.67 an hour, with employees also receiving full paid healthcare and paid holidays after a 90-day work period. These temp employees can also be hired on as full-time workers after two years of service, with the last 12 months of that two-year period served as a full-time temp.
Both Welter and LeTourneau have suggested GM do away with its mandatory marijuana drug testing protocol in order to attract more workers. As of now, GM conducts on-site drug testing at job fairs, potentially turning away would-be candidates. Recreational and medical marijuana use is illegal in Indiana, although Michigan legalized recreational use back in 2018. Medical use of marijuana has been legal in Michigan since 2008.
“You’ve got this candidate pool that know they can smoke marijuana in the evening rather than having a drink,” Welter said. “It’s kind of silly to lose good workers. Marijuana doesn’t create the problems that opioids, cocaine and other drugs do.”
For now, GM hopes additional job fairs and new recruiting tactics on social media can help it find the temporary part-time workers it needs. The automaker will hold a two-day job fair at Flint Assembly next week, the Free Press reports, which will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Wednesday and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursday.
Subscribe to GM Authority for more General Motors production news, General Motors-related COVID-19 news and around-the-clock General Motors news coverage.
- Sweepstakes Of The Month: Win a 2023 Corvette Z06 Convertible. Details here.
Sponsored Links
Hey, let’s hire lazy, entitled, unmotivated potheads to build automobiles. There is a reason that UAW means Unemployed Auto Workers.
Hey, let’s hire lazy, entitled, unmotivated potheads to build automobiles. There is a reason UAW means Unemployed Auto Workers.
The job sucks , they string employees on for years, it’s like prison inside, force you to work long hours , and long weeks, never hire you, then let you go, it’s not the old GM, beat your body up for nothing, Dont let your kids work there , it’s not worth what it will do to there life, emotional and physical. I know 1st hand. And the UAW is corrupt.
Management would take advantage of these temps, not properly training them so they would over work themselves causing them to get hurt, always threatening to fire them for any reason along with making statements like “if u dont like it McDonald’s is hiring” what GM fail to realize is that they are no longer only employers that’s starting off at $16 a hour and pair that with RESPECT, and being able to spend time with their families people decide to go elsewhere
I’m currently at gms Fort Wayne assembly, and they can’t get enough “temps” to show up here because of several reasons. The main reason is the jobs are hard. It’s extremely fast paced on most jobs. They are overloaded. There aren’t a lot of “easy” jobs left. The pension is gone, temps do not get a raise unless they get hired and you get no job security. Or you can go to work at Costco ( or anywhere) have an easier job with no pressure and make the same money.
GM is not having trouble hiring temps because of the drug testing, they’re having difficulties finding candidates because no one wants to be a Temp. They treat temps like crap and the so called business managers and group leaders are the worse, not all of them but most. The work breaks you down and they bounces you around to any job that’s not owned by a seniority worker . It’s out there from previous workers how they treat temps and nobody wants to Work there.
Wow, drop the drug testing so we can hire weed and crack heads LOL. I can’t believe Eric let that crap come outta his mouth, it’s about time you guys realize that the decades of temp abuse has ran its course and that the chickens have come home to roost
Didn’t think anyone lived there anymore.
The low wage and the temp bs is alot to do with why no one wants to work for gm. Temps get crapped on everyday and expected to be ok with no work life balance. Then the incessant layoffs just trying to make eligibility to be permanent. This place is a joke.