Published October 23, 2007
[ From Lansing State Journal ] GM cuts third shift: 1,000 workers at Delta plant facing layoffs
Barbara Wieland
Lansing State Journal
CORRECTION: Workers who will be laid off from the General Motors Corp. Lansing Delta Township plant will continue to accrue seniority after layoff. They will receive unemployment plus supplemental unemployment benefits for up to 48 weeks. If they haven’t been recalled to work after that, they will enter the JOBS Bank where they will receive their regular, 40-hour pay until they are called back to work. Information in a story on Page 5A of Tuesday’s Lansing State Journal was incorrect because of a source error.
DELTA TWP. - Third-shift workers at the General Motors Corp. Lansing Delta Township assembly plant and the auto parts suppliers that support it will be out of work in a month.
The automaker said Monday that it is getting rid of the third shift at the assembly plant after the Nov. 22 Thanksgiving holiday. The move could result in the layoff of as many as 1,000 people at the GM plant, and possibly more at the supplier plants.
The plant makes the Buick Enclave, Saturn Outlook and GMC Acadia. Low-seniority workers and temporary workers are the ones in danger of layoffs.
GM spokespeople said the company always had intended the third shift to be a temporary measure as the plant geared up toward full production.
When the shift was fully started in September, workers were told it could last for up to six months, said plant spokeswoman Heidi Magyar.
Craig Johnson, vice president of United Auto Workers Local 602, the union representing the GM Delta plant workers, said he's waiting to hear those details from GM.
"There's always rumors going around, but I'm telling people to wait until they hear something official," Johnson said.
Unions representing workers at the supplier plants couldn't be reached for comment.
The GM plant's third shift already had an on-again, off-again history. In March, GM started up the third shift in the paint and body shop, only to bring it to a halt before the third shift expanded to the general assembly portion of the plant.
Stepping back
"We said right from the very beginning that the third shift was based on market demand," said GM spokesman Tom Wickham. "We had to get enough product out there, and the third shift was added because we were bringing out the Buick Enclave and had two other products going well."
But now, market forecasts call for stepping back, he said.
Gregg Shotwell, an employee at GM's parts warehouse in Delta Township and critic of both GM and the UAW, doubts the explanation.
He said that the plant hasn't been able to produce enough vehicles even with three shifts running around the clock. The plant has run overtime Saturday shifts for the past two weekends and has work planned for this Saturday as well.
"That tells me this is not volume related. This is not market related," he said.
Rather, he believes GM is doing it to get highly paid workers off the payroll.
Under a "time-for-time" contract rule with the UAW, laid-off workers can be called back to their jobs for a time period as long as their length of seniority.
For example, a worker with one year of seniority has a one-year period of layoff during which he or she can be called back to work.
After that year, the call-back right is terminated.
And that matters because many of the GM workers facing layoffs are former temporary workers who only earned a seniority date earlier this month.
The new contract between GM and the UAW, ratified on Oct. 10, made many temporary workers permanent.
Contract stipulations
The contract also provided for a lower wage rate for non-core production workers.
"These folks have only a few weeks of time-for-time, and after that, GM can hire in new people at a lower rate of pay," Shotwell said.
It's not yet clear if the recently hired GM workers will be granted a longer call-back time, GM's Wickham said.
Lansing Delta Township worker Alex Hernandez said he hopes GM will restart the third shift soon.
GM often goes through a period of sluggish sales this time of year, he said.
"It's pretty common that things slow down and pick right back up around April," he said. "I hope these people will be added back."
Contact Barbara Wieland at 267-1348 or bwieland@lsj.com.
