GENERAL MOTORS 1 big plant is targeted to close, union says
GM also proposes to close a powertrain plant and an office building.
DETROIT (AP) -- General Motors Corp.'s 68-year-old Baltimore assembly plant is the only major GM factory targeted for closing as part of the automaker's new tentative agreement with the United Auto Workers, union leaders told local presidents Sunday.
The local officers were in Detroit to hear highlights of the proposed four-year labor pacts announced Thursday with GM, the world's largest automaker, and major automotive supplier Delphi Corp.
According to a UAW-produced document prepared for the officers and obtained by The Associated Press, GM has identified three facilities for shuttering: the Baltimore plant, which has about 1,100 UAW workers; a powertrain plant in Saginaw, Mich., with 378 employees; and the Argonaut Building, an aging office structure in Detroit.
GM builds the Chevrolet Astro and GMC Safari vans in Baltimore. The plant's future was uncertain because GM had no work assigned to it beyond 2005 -- now the year it will close.
What had been proposed
During negotiations, Delphi, which was spun off from GM in 1999, proposed the consolidation of six facilities, the document says. The supplier proposed merging two plants in Flint; its Tuscaloosa, Ala., plant into an operation in Lockport, N.Y.; and an Olathe, Kan., facility into Fitzgerald, Ga.
"The UAW resisted this proposal and Delphi withdrew it," the UAW document says. "Nevertheless, the company notified the union that it intends to raise the issue of potential consolidation of these facilities during the term of the 2003 agreement."
The last contract, negotiated in 1999, banned plant closings.
GM has 115,000 active UAW workers; Delphi has about 30,000.
Company representatives have declined to discuss details of the proposed pacts.
The details are among the first to emerge about which operations the Big Three automakers have targeted as part of four-year, tentative contracts they reached with the union last week.
The new deals provide $3,000 signing bonuses, a second-year bonus tied to a worker's rate of pay and wage increases of 2 percent and 3 percent, respectively, in the third and fourth years of the contracts.
The UAW predicts the average production worker will realize additional income of $17,400 over the life of the agreement.