GM to hire more Delphi transfers

By Don Shilling

Packard is hiring 200 workers to replace people transferring to GM.

About 270 of the new 1,400 jobs at the Lordstown car plant are being taken by Delphi Packard Electric workers.

In a second round of transfers this month, 170 Packard workers agreed Tuesday to shift over to the General Motors plant. They will start June 30 as GM prepares to add a third shift in Lordstown in August.

Ninety-eight Packard workers previously accepted transfers to Lordstown. Those workers started last week and this week.

Mike O’Donnell, shop chairman of Local 717 of the International Union of Electrical Workers at Packard, said he isn’t sure whether GM will make more offers.

GM is taking Packard workers because it is assisting Packard’s parent company, Delphi Corp., in a bankruptcy reorganization. GM used to be the parent company of Delphi.

GM is drawing from a list of Packard workers who had to sign up for transfers by March 12. The selections are being made by seniority.

In addition to the Packard workers transferring to Lordstown, 23 workers have accepted offers at other GM plants.

Chris Lee, a GM spokesman, said the company wouldn’t know until July how many of the 1,400 jobs being created at Lordstown would be filled by transfers from other GM plants and Delphi. He didn’t have any information on the transfers from GM plants.

Lee said GM typically uses a referral list developed at the plant if it needs to hire new workers. Union officials have said that such a list was drawn up earlier this year by plant employees.

As GM is considering its hiring needs, Packard wants to move quickly to hire about 200 production workers, O’Donnell said. Those workers are needed to replace employees who transferred to GM.

Those interested in working at Packard can apply at the Trumbull County One Stop or at www.onestopohio.org by clicking on the SCOTI tab.

Other companies probably will be hiring because of the third shift being added to Lordstown, said Bill Turner, work force administrator for the Trumbull County One Stop. Several suppliers trimmed their staffing when GM eliminated the midnight shift at Lordstown in 2006.

United Auto Workers Local 1112 represents about 400 hourly workers at those plants, in addition to workers at the car plant.

The Packard jobs pay $10.82 an hour and don’t have medical benefits. The 25 percent of Packard’s production workers with the lowest seniority fall into this pay tier. Packard will have about 680 hourly workers after the GM transfers.

As new hires are added, however, some workers will move up to the next tier, which provides medical benefits and pay of $11.33 an hour.

A new labor contract approved last year cut the hourly pay of longtime production workers from $27 to $16.50 but gave them a $105,000 payment over three years.

Workers from the second and third tiers cannot move up to this tier.

All of the GM transfers have been offered to production workers so far. O’Donnell said the skilled trades jobs at GM are being taken by workers from the United Auto Workers. The UAW has a large number of skilled trades workers who are in a jobs bank or who are working in production jobs at GM. The jobs bank pays workers to report to work even if they have no work to perform.

Packard production workers who are transferred will receive the top UAW pay rate of $28 an hour. New hires at GM are being paid about $14 an hour.

shilling@vindy.com