GM Lordstown has much to celebrate in its 50 years

A small item this week in Years Ago, The Vindicator’s daily history column, stood out among others as it heralded a monumental turning point in the industrial history of the Mahoning Valley.

The item from Thursday recalled this historic event on April 28, 1966: “The first car rolls off the assembly line at the General Motors plant at Lordstown, a white four-door Chevrolet Impala.”

Fifty years and more than 15 million Valley-made vehicles later, the sprawling Lordstown GM Complex keeps on rolling – and roaring. The 6.2 million-square-foot plant symbolizes, perhaps better than any other institution in the Greater Youngstown area, the enduring rock-solid work ethic, commitment to quality and perseverance that havelong characterized much of our region’s skilled labor force.

As such, we congratulate Lordstown GM workers, management and suppliers – and the tens of thousands who preceded them – for jobs well done.

The proof of their success is partly in the numbers:

Today the Lordstown plant ranks as the largest single-line manufacturing facility in the world.

With 4,500 workers, the plant ranks No. 1 among the Valley’s largest private-sector employers.

Wages from the plant’s assembly division, metal fabricating plant and paint shop provide a shot in the arm totaling nearly $400 million annually to our state and local economies. Workers pay $81 million to the local, state and federal governments through income-tax payments and donate more than $1 million yearly to charities.

But numbers alone tell only part of the success story of the automaking behemoth. The plant arrived in the Valley at a most propitious time – just as the deindustrialization of the nation had begun to kick in. Not more than a decade after Lordstown GM’s grand opening, the legacy steel industries that defined this region for more than a century began to topple like dominoes, leaving behind an economic crisis of theretofore unseen dimensions.

Against that backdrop of gloom, the Trumbull County automaking plant stood as a comforting, uplifting and persevering mainstay.

UPS & DOWNS

Of course, the history of the first 50 years of the Lordstown mega-factory cannot be written without acknowledging a variety of troublesome bumps along the way.

Subpar vehicle quality – best remembered by the much-maligned Chevrolet Vega from the 1970s – characterized a troubling era for the plant. Strained labor-management relations, charges of excessively fast assembly line speeds and other disputes gave the Lordstown plant an occasional black eye.

Technology and robotics took their toll on the scope of employment at the plant over the years as well. The complex once boasted a work force of about 12,000 employees. Today, that number has been more than halved.

Fickle economics over the past half-century brought a series of ups and downs in the fortunes of the plant. For a number of years, intense competition from Japanese and other international small-car manufacturers had many fearing that the plant would be on the chopping block as lists of GM North American plant closures continued to grow longer and longer.

But Lordstown GM again persevered.

It also persevered through the Great Recession of 2008-09, which culminated in the bankruptcy filing of the company. But just as GM rose from the ashes – thanks in large part to the federal government’s bailout – its Lordstown operations rebounded as well with a massive injection of new capital toward a new product, the Chevrolet Cruze.

Today, the Cruze stands as one of the division’s best-selling cars and keeps the Valley plant buzzing three shifts daily. Its brand-spanking new Next Generation model represents a promising future ahead for the company and its presence in the Valley.

Clearly then, there’s much for GM workers and the community to celebrate. The 50th anniversary hoopla will climax May 20 with an open house at the plant and May 21 with a car show there. Mark your calendars now for those dates with the dynamo that has fueled economic health in our region for 50 years and that we feel confident will continue to do in the years and decades ahead.