Chamber points laid-off GM employees to new opportunities

February 8, 2019 at 12:02a.m.

Chamber, partners join efforts to keep GM employees in region

YOUNGSTOWN

The Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber and economic development partners in the region have built a list of companies with job opportunities for laid- off workers from General Motors Lordstown, Magna Seating and Comprehensive Logistics.

Partners include the Greater Cleveland Partnership, Greater Akron Chamber and Medina County Economic Development Corp. in Ohio and the Shenango Valley and Lawrence County chambers in Pennsylvania.

“In an effort to keep individuals living and working in the area, we realize the importance of marketing employment opportunities to displaced workers at General Motors and supplier companies,” said Marcy Angelo, the chamber’s manager of Business Development and workforce initiative JobsNow.

“It’s important for us to work together,” said Alex McCoy, CEO of the Lawrence County Regional Chamber of Commerce.

“This is an issue for more than just one community.”

The list may be accessed at regionalchamber.com/economicdevelopment/edworkforce/jobsnow.

Chamber President and CEO James Dignan said the list is a good compilation of the members looking for skilled workers.

“It’s a way to keep all of these valuable employees in our market in the region,” he said.

“This is providing an updated list of those businesses and our members in the area actively looking for employees. ... Businesses can’t grow if they can’t fill the vacant positions, and we don’t want people to leave the community; we want them to stay here.”

In addition, the Detroit News reported Thursday that General Motors Co. will pay about 46,500 United Auto Workers hourly employees profit-sharing checks of up to $10,750 this year, the company said Wednesday.

The Detroit automaker announced profit-sharing as part of its full-year 2018 earnings report. Its pre-tax profits in North America – the figure profit-sharing is based on – totaled $10.8 billion.

Workers should see the payments in their Feb. 22 paycheck, GM said in a Wednesday statement.

Last year, GM paid about $11,750 to some 50,000 UAW workers on a $11.9 billion North American profit.

“The UAW membership makes the components for and builds the finest General Motors cars, trucks, crossovers, SUVs and vans in the world right here in the U.S.A.,” UAW vice president and director of the GM department Terry Dittes said in a statement.

“That is the driving force behind propelling GM to make $10.769 billion in net profits in the U.S. for 2018.”

Mahoning County commissioners said during a Thursday meeting it’s “disheartening” to hear General Motors tout $8.1 billion in net profits for 2018, according to an earnings report released Wednesday, when local workers at the soon-idled Lordstown plant have been left behind.

“You look at the billions in profits that General Motors has made in the last couple of years – that has been a lifetime investment in this community,” Commissioner Anthony Traficanti said.

“And for [GM] to simply take corporate profits over the lives of good, honest, hard-working people … to me, it’s a slap in the face to the Valley.

“I truly believe they are trying to break the union. And it’s sad – I know a lot of people who have called me on the phone and have said, ‘I have to leave.’”

Though Dave Green, United Auto Workers Local 1112 president, didn’t use those exact terms, he said the automaker’s profitability moves are deliberate, “obviously, with the timing of General Motors restructuring the plants only in union facilities in North America and not Mexico.”

As Green and Commissioner David Ditzler noted Thursday, Mexican auto- workers make between $1.50 and $3 an hour.

“One thing they don’t have in Mexico is a parking lot. The people who work there can’t afford to buy cars. They get bused to work every day,” Green said.

Both called for legislation to deter companies from outsourcing the kind of work done at the Lordstown plant.

Union wage negotiations have been conciliatory before, during and even after GM filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and was subsequently bailed out, Green added.

“As the decades have gone by, we’ve outsourced more work. It’s the same work with lower wages,” he said.

The company has signaled the fate of the 53-year-old plant won’t be decided until labor negotiations begin, when the union’s contract expires in September.

“Understand, we want the company to make money – and they’re making a lot of money. They’re making billions of dollars a year – it was American taxpayers and Canadian taxpayers that bailed the company out so they could make billions of dollars a year.

“To make money for the shareholders is fine, but what about the workers in the community? Aren’t they shareholders as well?”