Union Official: UAW Bent Over Backwards for GM to Keep Lordstown Open, and for What?

Steph Willems
by Steph Willems

The last Chevrolet Cruze rolled out of Lordstown Assembly earlier this month, with the 53-year-old plant going dark two days later. Some laid-off workers are staying put, waiting to see if September contract talks hold any promise of a future in Lordstown.

While General Motors admits the United Auto Workers was willing to do its part to save the Lordstown Assembly Plant, details of that pact remained unknown. Now, a union official has shed light on some of the concessions the UAW agreed to.

Declining sales of the plant’s sole product spelled the end for the model, and potentially the plant itself. Still, UAW officials felt there was hope for its continued operation, Concessions agreed to by the UAW and a new product would have given the facility a new lease on life, one official claims.

“Everything they asked us to do, we did,” said Dan Morgan, shop chairman of Local 1112 and chief negotiator of the agreement, in an interview with Bloomberg.

In 2017, after GM cut Lordstown’s third shift amid falling sedan sales, UAW officials met with GM brass over the course of three months, eventually hatching out a plan to make Cruze production more profitable. According to Morgan, the union agreed to concessions contained within a “Super Competitive Operating Agreement” — an even more aggressive pact than the one put into action at GM’s low-profit Orion plant.

“We knew we were making small cars,” Morgan said. “We wanted to know what we had to do to stay in the game.”

GM reportedly told the union officials that a more competitive labor agreement could help the plant gain a new product. Perhaps a Mexican-made product would come stateside, some members hoped. The agreement, signed in July 2017 and put into effect in 2018 “allowed GM to bring in contractors, temps and other lower-wage staff to work in the plant,” Bloomberg reports, with the concessions amounting to $118 million a year. Not surprisingly, it proved unpopular with members.

Another part of the deal was the merging of UAW Locals 1112 and 1714 for cost-saving reasons. For its part, GM agreed to amp up the Cruze’s marketing and offer deals on certain options — moves that never happened, Morgan claims.

Cruze sales continued to decline, with Lordstown losing its second shift in June of 2018. Still, by October of last year, Morgan said the Cruze was profitable, which made GM’s November restructuring announcement all the more surprising.

While GM spokesman Dan Flores admits the UAW made concessions, ultimately, “We didn’t discontinue the Cruze because of something the local union did or didn’t do,” he said. “It was a market-driven decision to discontinue the Cruze, and there were no products to allocate to Lordstown.”

As laid-off workers ponder whether to uproot their lives and take positions offered at other plants scattered across the Midwest, some worry waiting for Lordstown Assembly’s potential salvation will leave them last in line — and out of luck.

[Image: General Motors]

Steph Willems
Steph Willems

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  • Namesakeone Namesakeone on Mar 31, 2019

    It's simple. To the major corporations, communities don't matter. Customers don't really matter. Employees really don't matter. Shareholders matter. And shareholders want short-term results, so they can sell their shares quickly for a profit. After they do, the company and all its stakeholders can go straight to hell.

  • DenverMike DenverMike on Apr 01, 2019

    Do us all a favor, take it all down to bare land. By the time new owners/users bring it all up to current commercial building code, it'd be much cheaper to start from scratch. That's partly why so many historic commercial and industrial builds go abandoned forever. GM is clearly dying to build cars where unemployment is greatest anyway. Mexico, right next to their sweatshop labor, parts suppliers.

  • ToolGuy Ford is good at drifting all right... 😉
  • Dave Holzman A design award for the Prius?!!! Yes, the Prius is a great looking car, but the visibility is terrible from what I've read, notably Consumer Reports. Bad visibility is a dangerous, and very annoying design flaw.
  • Wjtinfwb I've owned multiple Mustang's, none perfect, all an absolute riot. My '85 GT with a big Holley 4 barrel and factory tube header manifolds was a screaming deal in its day and loved to rev. I replaced it with an '88 5.0 Convertible and added a Supercharger. Speed for days, handling... present. Brakes, ummm. But I couldn't kill it and it embarrassed a lot of much more expensive machinery. A '13 Boss 302 in Gotta Have It Green was a subtle as a sledgehammer, open up the exhaust cut outs and every day was Days of Thunder. I miss them all. They've gotten too expensive and too plush, I think, wish they'd go back to a LX version, ditch all the digital crap, cloth interior and just the Handling package as an add on. Keep it under 40k and give todays kids an alternative to a Civic or WRX.
  • Jpolicke In a communist dictatorship, there isn't much export activity that the government isn't aware of. That being the case, if the PRC wanted to, they could cut the flow of fentanyl down to a trickle. Since that isn't happening, I therefore assume Xi Jinping doesn't want it cut. China needs to feel the consequences for knowingly poisoning other countries' citizens.
  • El scotto Oh, ye nattering nabobs of negativism! Think of countries like restaurants. Our neighbors to the north and south are almost as good and the service is fantastic. They're awfully close to being as good as the US. Oh the Europeans are interesting and quaint but you really only go there a few times a year. Gents, the US is simply the hottest restaurant in town. Have to stand in line to get in? Of course. Can you hand out bribes to get in quicker? Of course. Suppliers and employees? Only the best on a constant basis.Did I mention there is a dress code? We strictly enforce it. Don't like it? Suck it.
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