UAW Pulls Out of Joint Rose Parade Float With GM : Labor: The planned closure of the Van Nuys plant is cited as the reason for the action by Local 645. The auto maker still plans a New Year’s Day entry.

The United Auto Workers union at the General Motors plant in Van Nuys is refusing to co-sponsor a Rose Parade float with General Motors this year, a protest against the company’s decision to close the plant.

For the past three years GM and the UAW have jointly sponsored prize-winning floats in the New Year’s Day parade through Pasadena. But the union’s Local 645--which has provided most of the volunteer labor for the project--recently notified GM that it would not participate this year because of the planned closure of the Van Nuys facility next August.

“We just feel hurt,” said Joe Garcia, the local’s secretary-treasurer. “We feel we’ve been stabbed in the back, betrayed. . . . It’s hard to go on with any joint programs with the company.”

A GM official said Monday that there still will be a company float, but without the union insignia in recognition of “the UAW’s official position.”

The announced boycott, however, will not deter many union workers from helping decorate the float with tens of thousands of flowers, predicted Jim Gaunt, personnel director for the Van Nuys plant.

“We fully expect our people who wish to volunteer . . . will continue to do so,” Gaunt said. “We have an ongoing rose committee. . . . We will have the float and it will be one members of the GM family will be proud to say they helped build.”

But Garcia said Local 645 conducted a vote of members and the result was “pretty much unanimous” to pull out of this year’s float project. The UAW’s international headquarters in Detroit has endorsed the action, he said.

GM and the UAW first sponsored a joint entry in the Tournament of Roses Parade in 1989, installing two new $10,000 engines in the float to make sure there was no embarrassing breakdown.

The GM-UAW floats quickly gained a reputation for being among the most ambitious in the parade. Last January’s $300,000 entry, featuring a 70-foot wizard that pulled a dove and a ringed planet from its sleeves, captured the Grand Marshal’s Trophy for excellence in creative design and concept.

As with most float sponsors, GM hires an outside contractor for the major construction. But the crucial decorating work, completed in the two weeks before the parade, requires huge teams of volunteers.

In the past, Garcia said, many of the union’s 3,300 active members and 1,000 retirees, along with their families, have participated in the festive preparation, receiving parade tickets in return.

The upcoming parade “is going to be disappointing,” the union official said. “I guess I’ll have to watch it on the TV.”