GM to Rehire 200 for New Plant in Valley : Jobs: Laid-off workers will be making seat covers by June. The site is not chosen but it will not be the closed Van Nuys facility.
Calling the closed Van Nuys General Motors plant a “special case,” executives of the giant auto maker said Tuesday that it will open a new facility in the San Fernando Valley area to manufacture seat covers and hire back more than 200 laid-off auto workers.
GM representatives said the facility will not be located in the closed Van Nuys assembly plant (it is actually located in Panorama City), and company representatives are looking at possible sites “in the Van Nuys area.” Ray Knudson, a trustee of United Auto Workers, Local 645, which represents workers laid off at the Van Nuys plant, said the new GM facility will be in operation by June.
Knudson said UAW officials were told the new plant will eventually employ as many as 600 workers. However, Karen Longridge, spokeswoman for the GM division that will manufacture the seat covers, said immediate plans call for the hiring of only 200 laid-off workers and a yet undetermined number of support personnel.
“The jobs are permanent. They’ll be making seat covers for full-size Chevrolet and GM pickup trucks,” said Longridge, spokeswoman for Inland Fisher Guide Division, a member of GM Automotive Components Groups Worldwide.
The call back to work, however, covers only a small fraction of the laid-off GM Van Nuys workers.
When the Van Nuys plant closed in August, 1992, about 2,600 workers there lost their jobs. Peter Ternef, a GM spokesman in Detroit, said there are about 1,400 former Van Nuys employees still on laid-off status. The UAW said another 300 accepted jobs at other GM parts plants in 10 states.
According to Knudson, the jobs will be filled according to seniority. Some Local 645 members said it will require a minimum of 25 years of seniority to land one of the prized jobs. Most workers with 30 or more years of seniority are expected to accept one of the retirement incentives offered by GM under terms of the recently ratified three-year national agreement negotiated between the UAW and GM.
Joe Vasquez, a Palmdale resident who had worked 26 years at the Van Nuys plant when it was closed in 1992, hopes to return to work this spring.
“I will certainly apply for one of the jobs. GM has been good to me, and I want to finish the rest of my working life with them. I’m 45 and too young to qualify for any of the retirement programs. I can’t wait to go back to work,” said Vasquez, who was a forklift driver at the closed plant.
Under terms of the new GM-UAW contract, the laid-off Van Nuys workers will continue to draw paychecks and health benefits from the auto maker for three more years, until Sept. 14, 1996. Laid-off workers are paid about $18.50 an hour by GM, and those called back to work will earn the same amount in the new jobs.
When rumors of the new jobs surfaced earlier this month, there was speculation that the jobs would be transferred from a GM facility in Juarez, Mexico, that also makes seat covers. But in a telephone interview from her Warren, Mich., office, Longridge said the jobs slated for the San Fernando Valley are new jobs created by GM.
Representatives of GM and the UAW will meet with laid-off workers on Saturday to explain the new jobs and other benefits contained in the new labor contract.
Also on Tuesday, a GM official admitted publicly for the first time that GM had told workers the company would keep the Van Nuys plant open and build a new model there. The facility was closed after GM transferred production of Chevy Camaros and Pontiac Firebirds to a plant in Canada.
Previously, GM executives had denied making such a promise. However, Knudson and other Local 645 officials said that several years ago GM had “reassured us on a Friday they were going to keep us open, and then on Monday announced they were going to close the plant.”
Gerald Knechtel, GM vice president of industrial relations, told reporters in New York on Tuesday that GM had an “honest plan” to build another model at the Van Nuys facility but was forced to shut down the facility for economic reasons. He called the plant’s closure “a particularly emotional issue” for the auto maker, which operated the plant for 45 years and built 6.3 million vehicles there.
Knechtel said of the Van Nuys plant: “It’s a special case and we’re addressing it in a special way. . . . We’ve developed a special program for Van Nuys.”
Times staffer writer Donald W. Nauss contributed to this story from Detroit.
