Detroit News profiles Lordstown plant and its Cruze

LORDSTOWN

The Chevy Cruze — and the more than 4,500 workers who produce it at the General Motors Co. Lordstown facility — has been a well-documented, feel good story here in the Mahoning Valley.

Now, it’s getting some national media recognition.

Reporter Christina Rogers recently profiled the plant and the Cruze for The Detroit News:

“Workers at the General Motors Co. plant here are no strangers to uncertainty.

Two years ago, the fate of the Lordstown plant hung in the balance. The work force had dwindled to a couple of thousand — down from a peak of 12,000 workers in 1985 — and the factory itself was limping by on one shift.

GM was hurtling into bankruptcy, and many feared the factory would close, further devastating a region hit hard by the loss of steel mills and thousands of good-paying, blue-collar jobs.

What a difference a couple of years makes.

The factory is now among GM’s busiest and most productive plants with workers building GM’s top-selling car — the Chevrolet Cruze — around the clock on weekdays and often overtime on Saturday.

The work force, salaried and hourly, is back to its pre-recession levels at 4,500 and includes many transfers who lost their jobs when GM shuttered 11 plants nationwide during its 2009 bankruptcy.”

Read the full story and video in The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110914/AUTO01/109140374/In-Lordstown--there’s-a-new-sense-of-realism#ixzz1XviBgA2U