GM Keeps Hope Alive for Van Nuys Plant’s Workers

General Motors Corp. kept alive the prospect that its Van Nuys assembly plant will remain open despite formally announcing Wednesday that it plans to move production of its Camaro and Firebird sports cars from Van Nuys to Canada.

GM said the cars’ production will be shifted to its plant in Ste. Therese, Quebec, when the company begins building the next generation of the Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird. GM declined to say when that will be, but there is industry speculation that the new cars will arrive in late 1992. The Ste. Therese plant now builds the Chevrolet Lumina coupe and the Oldsmobile Ciera.

The announcement was not a surprise. Last October, a GM spokesman had said Van Nuys would not build the next generation of Camaros and Firebirds, and officials of GM and the United Auto Workers union already have been discussing proposals to convert the Van Nuys facility into a “flex” plant--one capable of quickly shifting production between several models--after the work on the Camaro and Firebird is transferred.

Indeed, GM took the occasion of announcing the Camaro/Firebird production change to say again that the Van Nuys plant, which employs about 3,500 workers, may survive. But again it provided no guarantees and no details about what the plant might do after the Camaro and Firebird move to Canada.

“We’re very optimistic about the business case for conversion of the plant,” GM spokeswoman Kathy Tanner said Wednesday.

Henry Gonzalez, assistant director for the UAW region that includes California, also was upbeat about the factory’s future. “We think we’re going to get the flex plant,” he said. But he urged GM to announce such plans quickly so as to bolster worker morale at the facility.

The future of the plant, particularly its production of the Camaro and Firebird, had been clouded for years by several factors. The cars’ design has changed little since 1982, and their sales have declined steadily since then.

In addition, most Camaros and Firebirds are sold east of the Rockies, where most of GM’s part suppliers also are located. The cost of sending parts to Van Nuys and then shipping most of the assembled cars back east added hundreds of dollars to their cost.

GM noted Wednesday that the selection of the Ste. Therese plant to build the Camaro and Firebird followed studies that focused on the Canadian plant’s “ability to build quality products at competitive costs.”

And two weeks ago, an internal GM study publicly surfaced that showed the Van Nuys plant had the worst production quality among 21 GM auto plants surveyed in late-1989. However, UAW officials and the plant’s workers vigorously disputed the study and defended their workmanship.