Small car is big gain for Michigan

June 27, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

Idled plant to build GM’s new subcompact

ORION TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — Michigan has snatched back a few of its fast-disappearing auto jobs, winning a high-stakes competition with two other states to build General Motors Corp.’s next-generation subcompact car.

The news is a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy Michigan economy that has seen unemployment hit a nation-leading 14.1 percent, lots of housing foreclosures, unpaid furlough days for state workers and uncertainty for thousands of others worried about whether they’ll still be getting a paycheck in the months ahead.

GM said Friday it would use an idled midsize car plant in Orion Township, about 40 miles north of Detroit, to assemble small and compact cars. The automaker also had considered plants in Janesville, Wis., and Spring Hill, Tenn.

GM said it expects to start retooling the Orion assembly plant in late 2010 and run two shifts there by 2011, producing 160,000 vehicles annually. The move will save 1,200 jobs.

“We’re delighted,” Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson said. “I think the impact of reopening that plant and making the small car here will have a huge long-term effect not just on Oakland County but southeast Michigan and help us address some of the real serious employment issues that we have in this region.”

A spokesman for Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle said GM Manufacturing Vice President Tim Lee told the governor Friday morning that the automaker chose Michigan.

“I am deeply disappointed by GM’s decision not to reopen the Janesville plant,” Doyle said in a written statement. “Because GM in recent bankruptcy proceedings announced closing seven plants in Michigan and the Orion plant was in current operation, we knew it would be an uphill battle.”

Tony Medrano, an hourly employee at the Orion Township plant, called it “awesome news.” The Orion plant now makes the Pontiac G6 and Chevrolet Malibu midsize cars, but the Pontiac brand is being discontinued, and the Malibu also is made at a factory in Kansas The plant was to go on standby status later this year.

Medrano, who has worked for GM for eight years, was one of the plant workers who accompanied Democratic Michigan Rep. Gary Peters to GM’s headquarters last week to deliver letters to company officials pressing for bringing small-car production to the factory.

He’s unsure about the future of his job because its unclear if the plant will need the same number of workers as it has now. But he said he still wanted Orion Township to get the chance to build the 160,000 small cars annually.