AUTOS : Some Security for GM’s Relocated Van Nuys Staff? : Transfers: Employees at sold Indiana plant may stay with the company by moving again.
Score a victory--but only a partial one--for a wary band of veteran General Motors auto workers who feared that they had relocated from Southern California to Indiana only to be abandoned by the company.
The worried workers included many of the roughly 85 employees who transferred to GM facilities in Anderson, Ind., after the company shut its Van Nuys assembly plant in 1992.
Although initially delighted to keep their jobs, some of the workers felt betrayed when the company last month sold part of its Anderson operations to a newly formed firm. The employees feared that they would lose treasured GM employee benefits and job security.
Moreover, many relocated Van Nuys veterans resented the company’s decision this spring to offer relocation packages worth up to $60,000 to coax GM workers still laid off in Southern California to return to work in other parts of the country. The former Van Nuys workers who moved to Anderson right after the Van Nuys plant closed received much smaller relocation packages, often worth no more than $1,000.
Last week, however, details began trickling out about an agreement enabling the Van Nuys veterans in Anderson to stay with GM by transferring to plants still owned by the company. The pact was crafted by GM, the United Auto Workers and the owner of the recently divested Anderson facilities, a Citicorp-led venture called Delco Remy America.
The welcome news is that the plan grants the Van Nuys veterans now with Delco Remy essentially the same rights as laid-off GM workers to relocate to GM facilities with job openings. Openings will be awarded on the basis of seniority. Given the large number of job openings created by the company’s booming sales, most and possibly all of the Van Nuys veterans who want new jobs with GM are expected to find them.
In most if not all cases, the workers are expected to land jobs similar to the ones they now hold, and likewise, their hourly pay will remain the same. Currently, assembly line workers receive $16.53 an hour, while skilled-trades workers get $19.37 an hour.
But there also was some bad news for the Van Nuys veterans. Although company and union officials remain tight-lipped about relocation benefits, sources say the former Van Nuys employees will not be eligible for the $60,000 packages. Their relocation benefits are expected to be a maximum of $3,324.
In addition, few of the Van Nuys veterans now in Anderson are expected to wind up back in California. A new GM sewing plant in Brea has been doing some hiring, but not many of the remaining Van Nuys veterans in Anderson are expected to qualify for the small number of available openings.
Still, the “most important thing for them is to go back to a GM facility somewhere” so they can be assured of keeping their full pension benefits, said Mary Macomber, the wife of one of the former Van Nuys workers in Anderson and a leader of the group that pushed GM and the UAW to provide transfer rights.
However, Macomber remains concerned that GM, as part of its ongoing reorganization program, will continue selling plants across the country.
She said that, in turn, would force the Van Nuys veterans and other so-called “GM gypsies” to keep on moving from plant to plant, disrupting their lives further. “It’s not over yet,” Macomber said.
