Lordstown donates cars to firefighters

Lordstown crews worked an extra minute to cover the labor costs of building the donated cars.
By DON SHILLING
VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR
LORDSTOWN -- Two Chevrolet Cavaliers built at the General Motors' Lordstown Assembly Plant are being donated to the New York City Fire Department.
GM and the United Auto Workers were to have a ceremony today before sending off the cars.
The cars were built with donated time by plant workers, with GM and the UAW splitting the cost of the parts.
The effort is part of a nationwide program by GM and the UAW to donate 60 vehicles to the fire department, which was decimated by the collapse of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Seventeen GM plants are donating vehicles.
The effort began when a Michigan plant decided to build and donate pickup trucks, but top corporation and union officials soon expanded it to include other plants.
Will be useful: Maureen Midgley, Lordstown plant manager, said Cavaliers will be handy for the fire department for use in shuttling people or parts in the city.
"Having a small car in a large city is quite practical," she said.
The only GM vehicles the fire department said it couldn't use were Cadillacs and Corvettes, she said.
To cover the labor expenses of building the Cavaliers, plant workers stayed on the line a minute into their lunch breaks on all three shifts Thursday.
Midgley said the plants produce about a car a minute so the donation of the three minutes more than covered the labor costs of building the cars.
Money donation: John Mohan, UAW Local 1112 shop chairman, said the time donation by union members followed their donation of about $14,000 to relief efforts in collections shortly after the attacks.
He said Lordstown workers, like other Americans, wanted to do what they could to support the victims of the attacks.
"It's like when a family goes through a tragedy, I think this has brought all Americans together," he said.
shilling@vindy.com