South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
GM announces 400 jobs, electric vehicle
ORION TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Less than a week after a series of critical tweets from the president over an Ohio plant closure, General Motors announced plans Friday to add 400 jobs and build a new electric vehicle at a factory north of Detroit.
The company said it will spend $300 million at its plant in Orion Township, Mich., to manufacture a Chevrolet vehicle based on the battery-powered Bolt.
GM wouldn’t say when the new workers will start, when the new vehicle will go on sale, or if the workers will be new hires or come from a pool of laid-off workers from the planned closings of four U.S. factories by January.
The company also announced plans Friday to spend about another $1.4 billion at U.S. factories with 300 more jobs but did not release a time frame or details.
The moves come after last weekend’s string of tweets by President Donald Trump condemning GM for shutting its small-car factory in Lordstown, Ohio, GM CEO Mary Barra announces the investment of $300 million in its Orion Township, Mich., assembly plant.
east of Cleveland. During the weekend, Trump demanded that GM reopen the plant or sell it, criticized the local union leader and expressed frustration with CEO Mary Barra.
GM spokesman Dan Flores said the investment has been in the works for weeks. GM has said it planned to build more vehicles
off the underpinnings of the Bolt, which can go an estimated 238 miles on a single electric charge. The company has promised to introduce 20 new all-electric vehicles globally by 2023.
In November, GM announced plans to shut the four U.S. factories and one in Canada. About 3,300
workers in the U.S. would lose their jobs, as well as
2,600 in Canada. Another
8,000 white-collar workers were targeted for layoff. The company said the moves are necessary to stay financially healthy as GM faces large capital expenditures to shift to electric and autonomous vehicles.
Plants slated for closure include Lordstown; Detroit-Hamtramck, Mich.; Warren, Mich.; White Marsh, Md., near Baltimore and Oshawa, Ontario near Toronto. The factories largely make cars or components for them, and cars aren’t selling well these days with a dramatic consumer shift to trucks and SUVs. With the closures, GM is canceling multiple car models due to slumping sales, including the Chevrolet Volt plug-in gas-electric hybrid.
GM has said it can place about 2,700 of the laid-off U.S. workers at other factories, but it’s unclear how many will uproot and take those positions. More than 1,100 have already transferred, and others are retiring.
“Right now, we’re focused on the people of Lordstown, making sure they have opportunities because we do have jobs,” Barra told reporters following Friday’s announcement. “We want every single person in Lordstown to stay within the GM family, and that’s what we’re working on.”
The United Auto Workers has sued GM over the closings, which still must be negotiated with the union.
Trump’s latest GM tweet on Monday said GM should: “Close a plant in China or Mexico, where you invested so heavily pre-Trump,” and “Bring jobs home!”
Ohio and the area around the Lordstown plant are important to Trump’s 2020 re-election bid. The state helped push him to victory in 2016, and Trump has focused on Lordstown, seldom mentioning the other U.S. factories that GM is slated to close.
“General Motors is committed to supporting U.S. manufacturing, including the great states of Ohio and Michigan,” said Barra, who maintains that she sees no further layoffs or plant closures through the end of 2020.
Meanwhile, Trump criticized European auto makers Friday, suggesting he could impose tariffs on imports from companies such as BMW and Mercedes unless they build more plants in the United States.
“They have BMW, they have Mercedes, they have a lot of very good cars that come in,” Trump said in an interview. “I want them to make them here. If you’re going to sell them to the Americans, make them here.”