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Remaining workers dwindle at Lordstown plant
LORDSTOWN
The number of workers remaining at the General Motors Lordstown Assembly Complex has dwindled since the beginning of the month.
After the plant’s final day of operation March 6 – resulting in the loss of 1,500 jobs – a group of less than 200 employees continued working at the plant to produce replacement parts for the Chevrolet Cruze.
Dave Green, president of United Auto Workers Local 1112, said work at the stamping plant finished April 5, though there are still production and skilled-trades workers operating inside the plant.
“We finished up building the service parts around April 5. GM laid off about 43 people that day, but there’s still people left in production and skilled trades,” he said.
Green said he and others were doing material-handling work, which he characterized as moving items out of the plant. He said he was unsure how many workers remained at the facility.
General Motors announced approximately 26 employees would be laid off beginning May 31 in a filing with the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services in compliance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.
GM said in the WARN filing that 15 hourly employees and 11 salaried employees will be laid off.
Green said he anticipates there will be continued anxiousness over the plant until negotiations with the International United Auto Workers and General Motors conclude, most likely in mid-September. Those negotiations will begin this June.
In addition to contract negotiations, the International UAW also has filed a lawsuit claiming GM breached its 2015 national contract with the union when it shut down – or “unallocated” – three U.S. plants.
Part of the contention raised in the lawsuit is over the term “unallocated,” with the IUAW arguing it is functionally the same as a closure, while GM maintains it is not.
The three plants at the center of the lawsuit were the Lordstown plant, the Warren Transmission plant in Michigan and the Baltimore Operations plant in White Marsh, Md.