GM Will Allow Transfers From Jobs at Saturn
General Motors Corp., acting on a desire to integrate the Saturn small-car unit with the rest of the company, said Tuesday it will give Saturn employees the choice of returning to work at conventional GM plants.
Saturn executives said the one-time offer, made possible through a special agreement with the United Auto Workers union, will allow employees to quit Saturn and return to other GM plants without losing pension benefits. They said the option, open to all of Saturn’s 6,550 hourly workers, will expire Nov. 7.
“For a number of years, Saturn and the UAW have recognized that some team members, for a variety of personal reasons, wanted to relocate to other GM locations,” Saturn spokesman Bill Betts said. “Over this period of time, the UAW in particular sought a method of doing that, and we’ve achieved that with this special agreement.”
Betts said he did not know how many Saturn employees would take advantage of the offer. He said the company could replace them by shifting employees internally or hiring new workers at the Spring Hill, Tenn., Saturn plant.
“We have to take it on a case-by-case basis and decide, under the circumstances, what’s the right thing to do for any specific vacancy,” Betts said. “If an offer is made to somebody and they accept it, you would work out the time for their departure, and the team involved at Saturn would work out the replacement procedure.”
The decision to allow transfers between Saturn and other GM operations comes as GM seeks to strengthen its relationship with the union. Two strikes in the last quarter cost GM $150 million.
Labor experts said the decision to allow the transfers is the latest of several moves toward making Saturn less independent. “The ability for people to leave Saturn and go back to GM tends to integrate Saturn more closely into GM,” said Harley Shaiken, a University of California labor expert. “It makes it another plant, rather than a completely separate entity.”
Saturn workers have been separate from other GM employees, and most of them were hired by Saturn. At first, most Saturn employees enjoyed the independence, but over time, some workers have expressed concerns about Saturn’s rotating shift assignments and extensive overtime.
