GM’s stimulus for Valley

GM’s stimulus for Valley

Announcement last week that the General Motors Corp. will add 1,400 workers to a new third shift at its Lordstown Complex injects the Mahoning Valley economy with its largest and most profound economic stimulus in decades.

Fourteen hundred well-paying jobs will turbocharge all segments of Valley life and work with myriad ripple effects. The Regional Chamber projects an infusion of nearly 1,000 spinoff jobs and more than $75 million in annual impact.

GM Lordstown owes this good news to a convergence of factors. First, rising gasoline prices have shifted consumer tastes away from gas-guzzling SUVs, trucks and large automobiles and toward the fuel-efficient compact cars that have long been the trademark of our region’s largest employer.

Too, the GM work force has acquired a cooperative, can-do attitude with management that helped the plant secure a $1 billion renovation and modernization several years ago that paved the way for long-term viability of the plant.

We salute GM leaders and UAW Locals 1112 and 1714 at the complex who have worked resolutely toward making the plant the seventh most-productive in North America, according to the new and prestigious Harbour Report.

Keeping perspective

But as we relish the impressive jolt the third shift provides our region’s economy, we must also keep perspective and remain firmly grounded in reality.

Because of massive buyouts and attrition, restoration of the third shift brings total plant employment to about the levels of 2005 and a far cry from the nearly 12,000 employed there in 1985. In a broader view, the metro area has lost about 20,000 manufacturing jobs in the past decade.

And what GM giveth, GM can also easily taketh away. Although energy experts are predicting a long-term era of gas prices at or above $4 per gallon, fickle consumer attitudes could change, lessening demand and possibly shrinking or canceling out the additional GM shift and its coveted jobs.

That’s why public leaders and private entities such as the Regional Chamber must continue to aggressively pursue diverse 21st century development projects. They must build on the such successes as the Youngstown Business Incubator, Turning Technologies and several brownfield redevelopment projects.

After all, the Valley is still paying for its myopic vision during the heyday of its steel industry. And while the jobs, investment and economic boost of the new GM shift is heartily welcomed, it cannot be viewed as a panacea for our longstanding lethargic economy.

Instead it must be seen as one vital spark to ignite momentum for diverse and long-term economic livelihood in the Mahoning Valley.