Layoffs at GM to ripple in Valley

By Don Shilling

Some area suppliers match their production directly to the Lordstown car plant.

Suppliers to General Motors’ Lordstown complex are preparing to lay off hundreds of workers because of an extended shutdown of the car plant.

The area has several suppliers that match their production to the Lordstown plant, which has extended its traditional summer shutdown from two weeks to six weeks.

One of these suppliers, Comprehensive Logistics in Austintown, will lay off all of its 100 workers when the Lordstown shutdown starts May 29, said Don Constantini, company chief executive.

“If we have something with that long of a duration, you have no choice,” he said.

Comprehensive takes in parts from all over the country and ships them to the Lordstown plant just in time for assembly.

A sister company of Comprehensive, Falcon Transport of Austintown, also will have less work. The trucking company brings parts into Lordstown and other GM plants.

Constantini, who also leads Falcon, said about 70 drivers serve the Lordstown plant. He said the company will try to move as many of those drivers as possible to other accounts.

Falcon has about 1,200 drivers overall, but Constantini didn’t want to say how much of the company’s business is tied to GM.

Other area plants also are set up only to supply the Lordstown plant. Hundreds of workers are employed at these plants, which supply seats and other interior parts for the Lordstown cars, and they stop working when the car plant shuts down.

Workers at these supplier plants also were laid off in January when Lordstown was shut down because of the national downturn in car sales.

Delphi Packard Electric will have to adjust its production schedules with the decrease in car production at GM, said J. David Olsen, a Packard spokesman. He said it was too early to know how workers would be impacted.

Packard, which has about 750 hourly workers at plants in Trumbull County, produces cable and plastic and metal parts for wiring systems, including parts for a variety of models from GM and other automakers.

The new layoffs aren’t good for the area, but it could have been worse, said Jim Graham, president of United Auto Workers Local 1112 in Lordstown.

GM said Thursday that Lordstown would be shut down for three weeks in addition to one that was previously announced and the normal two-week summer shutdown. But Graham noted that other plants received up to nine additional down weeks.

“It was almost a relief for us,” he said.

GM added downtime weeks from May to July at 13 of its 22 assembly plants in the U.S. and Mexico to cut dealers’ inventory.

At Lordstown, about 2,000 hourly and salaried workers will be laid off. About 2,800 hourly workers were laid off earlier this year when the complex went from three shifts to one shift.

Graham said he thinks sales for the Lordstown-built Chevrolet Cobalt will pick up once bank loans are easier to obtain.

Also, he said construction inside the plant is going ahead on schedule. GM is spending $350 million to prepare for the launch of the Chevrolet Cruze next April.

shilling@vindy.com