Posted on 03/22/2019 12:25:37 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
ORION TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — Less than a week after a series of critical tweets from the president over an Ohio plant closure, General Motors is announcing plans to add 400 jobs and build a new electric vehicle at a factory north of Detroit.
The company says it will spend $300 million at its plant in Orion Township, Michigan, to manufacture a Chevrolet vehicle based on the battery-powered Bolt.
GM wouldn’t say when the new workers will start or when the new vehicle will go on sale, nor would it say if the workers will be new hires or come from a pool of laid-off workers from the planned closings of four U.S. factories by January.
The company also announced plans Friday to spend about another $1.4 billion at U.S. factories with 300 more jobs but did not release a time frame or details.
The moves come after last weekend’s string of venomous tweets by President Donald Trump condemning GM for shutting its small-car factory in Lordstown, Ohio, east of Cleveland. During the weekend, Trump demanded that GM reopen the plant or sell it, criticized the local union leader and expressed frustration with CEO Mary Barra.
GM spokesman Dan Flores would not answer questions about Trump but said the investment has been in the works for weeks. Indeed, GM has said it planned to build more vehicles off the underpinnings of the Bolt, which can go an estimated 238 miles on a single electric charge. The company has promised to introduce 20 new all-electric vehicles globally by 2023.
In November, GM announced plans to shut the four U.S. factories and one in Canada. About 3,300 workers in the U.S. would lose their jobs, as well as 2,600 in Canada. Another 8,000 white-collar workers were targeted for layoff.
(Excerpt) Read more at talkingpointsmemo.com ...
Trump doesn’t like large companies dumping American workers so they can move to Mexico...
To a degree, there will be no demand unless something is built, readily available and marketed to instigate interest which may turn into demand.
A lot of good that does the ~4,000 workers affected in Lordstown that lost jobs over the past few years during the downsizing and the recent closure.
I don’t think Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush or Reagan did either. They just weren’t as vocal about it.
Lordstown closing hurts, but sadly its also not surprising. GM as much as they want to claim they are the “new” GM, is still a piss poor run organization.
The Cruze, which it built, was cancelled. Small cars aren’t something that sell well... and retooling it to make something folks truly want, when GM is sitting on insane underutilization system wide, wasn’t likely to happen. I believe they were down to 1 shift, meaning the plant was idle 2/3 of the time...
http://www.vindy.com/news/2018/jul/28/will-gm-close-lordstown-auto-plant/
They already make the hatchback version in MX, so, keeping that large facility open with so much underutilization makes no sense. About the only thing that would change the calculus would be MASSIVE TARIFFS on imported vehicles, however given the Cruz’s total sales were dropping like a stone, so much so the entire vehicle was cancelled, that’s would not have likely changed much.
I hope the plant is put back in operation quickly by someone, and GM doesn’t just sit on it for 5 or 10 years empty... like it has been known to do.
I don’t know if any auto companies are looking to open new plants in the states, but generally they tend to go south where laws are more friendly... rather than up here, where laws and unions tends to make things more difficult for them.
Lordstown built an unpopular car... Sadly. The entire vehicle has been cancelled from the Chevy lineup. Lordstown closing, sadly isn’t surprising... it was down to 1 shift if memory serves, and building a car that wasn’t selling.
Retooling an older underutilized plant, when you already have more extra capacity than anyone else in the industry just wasn’t likely to happen. End of the day beancounters win.
I just hope GM doesn’t just sit on the plant for years before they even try to let someone else do something with it, as they have been known to do. No guarantee someone will be chomping at the bit to buy it, but I’d hate to see it just sit empty for years and not even be attempted to be moved.
The govt should buy it a and lease it to Toyota or VW for 1 dollar a year provided they build cars there.
Granted it was a long time ago, but workers in that plant were hostile and they had a lot of labor strife. That cooled down over the years, but a strong union mentality still exists.
Offer decent non union wages and they will come.
Honda already has an assembly plants in OH, I don’t know if they need capacity of another plant, but they are already established in the state.
The plant doesn’t need to be a car plant, per se, but I just hope its able to be put to some sort of use quickly, for Lordstown’s sake... but as I said this wasn’t exactly a surprise. The car they made wasn’t selling and never sold astounding as small cars just aren’t a big market in the US anymore SUV/CUV/Full Size Trucks are where buyers are at, mostly, and they have bigger margins to boot. The plant had already been scaled back to 1 shift, so it was idle 66% of the time... while the formal closing is another blow, its not like Lordstown wasn’t already hurting...
The good news, if there is any, is that thanks to Trumps economic policies things in OHIO are on an upward trajectory, compared to the flat/downward trajectory of the last 12-16 years for the region. Doesn’t meen there won’t be losses or pain, even in best of times there are, but hopefully things will wind up improving in Lordstown.
Well, from a political standpoint its in GM and Trump’s best interest to get something going there fast as possible... but GM has been a broken organization my entire life.... Yes the BK helped some, but don’t think it doesn’t still have a lot of rot left in it.
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