GM to halt production of Hummers Tuesday

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — General Motors Co. will halt Hummer production next week at its Louisiana plant until sale of the brand to a Chinese company is completed.

GM agreed last year to sell Hummer to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Corp. and expected the deal to close early in 2010 after approval by U.S. and Chinese regulators.

Assembly of Hummers at GM’s Shreveport, La., plant will be suspended Tuesday because there’s “sufficient inventory in the field” to sustain dealers while the sale makes its way through the regulatory process, Hummer spokesman Nick Richards said Wednesday.

Kevin Wale, president of GM’s China Group, who is involved in the Chinese government approval process for the deal, said it is “still to be decided” whether the Hummer sale will gain approval but added that he’s optimistic.

“It’s a very interesting process going through all levels of government,” he said after a speech Wednesday at the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit.

Richards said it was unclear how jobs would be affected at the plant in Shreveport, which also builds Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon pickup trucks.

“It hasn’t been determined what the impact will be right now, but Hummer production is under a quarter of production” at the plant, Richards said.

The Louisiana plant once employed about 3,000 people, but layoffs and buyouts have reduced that to about 1,120.

Doug Ebey, president of the UAW Local 2166, said he doesn’t “expect job cuts in the immediate future, but if [the sale] drags on and on, anything is possible.”

“This is a temporary suspension of production, and we expect the sale is going to go through,” Ebey said.