GM laying off 1,500 workers at three plants
The old equation holds true: fewer cars sold means fewer workers required to assemble them. This basic truth has been proven once again with GM's announced lay-offs of some 1,500 hourly workers, The cut's breakdown includes about 700 workers from General Motor's Pontiac assembly plant, about 400 each at both its Wilmington, Delaware, assembly plant and its Detroit-Hamtramck facility.In Pontiac, where GM assembles full-size trucks, the worker reduction is necessary as General Motors reduces its output to just 24 trucks per hour from 55 per hour. In Detroit, the General will cut its Buick Lucerne and Cadillac DTS production from 56 units per hour to 38, and in Delaware where the Pontiac Solstice, Saturn Sky and Opel Roadster are built, production has already been cut in half. This announcement comes just days after GM said it would close plants located in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Janesville, Wisconsin.
[Source: The Detroit News]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
phewop118 6:35PM (10/16/2008)
Why does GM have so many truck plants producing the same truck? Wouldn't it be more efficient to have one plant operating at max capacity?
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Jimbo 6:45PM (10/16/2008)
Two words: union contracts
Torrent 6:37PM (10/16/2008)
I'm sorry GM but what you need to do is make attractive, High MPG, High Quality affordable, small cars..... Aveo and the G3 *sigh* won't cut it.
And we can't have them by 2012. We need them now. Oh, I forgot. No small cars for the U.S., because in today's oil crisis, us Americans don't need small high MPG cars. /sarc.
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Gabagool 6:44PM (10/16/2008)
Funny you bring up 2012, i assume you were refering to Cruze. Well i read lates Motor Trend and in it they say that Cruze will be one of the largest cars in its segment (it will be bigger than Cobalt)
Yeah it will get 40 MPG on highway, but by 2012 many other cars will as well. In the same issue they said that Fiesta (Verve) will get 39.9 MPG on highway, also by 2010-2012 we will get new Civic, Sentra, Forte and a few other small cars.
jv2k 11:32PM (10/16/2008)
Which companies are making these high mpg cars you are talking about?
Luis 6:41PM (10/16/2008)
Sad...
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2007RC46SP2 9:34PM (10/16/2008)
so how many has GM laid off this year?
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Harry 9:49PM (10/16/2008)
I feel very bad for the families affected by these closings. Seems American's are losing jobs and homes at an alarming rate. I wonder when we will wake up and smell the coffee and work toward becoming an energy independent country. What short attention spans we have. When gas is scarce we conserve and look to produce, buy and drive energy efficient cars. When the oil is flowing cheap we forget, we have been there before. I am reading a newly released book by Jeff Wilson called the Manhattan Project of 2009. It should be a required read for all members of our government.
http://www.themanhattanprojectof2009.com
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Kevin 10:04PM (10/16/2008)
GM can go to hell, they fired anyone who had any restructuring plans or bright ideas to move the company forward like Chrysler did. They reaped what they sowed, they accused the young employees of being "stupid" and cared nothing for their input.
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Brn 8:28AM (10/17/2008)
Got a chip on your shoulder, Kevin?
Cardude 2:22AM (10/17/2008)
Small cars, small cars blah, blah, blah BLAH! What's Chevy's BEST seller? The Silverado, not the Aveo or the Cobalt.
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JCoke 5:33PM (10/17/2008)
Yeah... Cardude. You say that like GM is making money or something.
Harry 12:02PM (10/17/2008)
Our Dependence On Foreign Oil And Our Economy Woes
As our country sinks deeper and deeper into financial crisis little is being said about the direct link of our dependence on foreign oil. The exorbitant cost of fuel has strained every aspect of our economy. It doesn't stop at filling up the family vehicles to get back and forth to work and tend to the necessities, as if that were not enough of a sucker punch to our budgets. Utility bills have also seen record rate hikes to cover their increased production costs. Every consumer product has seen sharp rises in both production and shipping costs that are readily passed on to us. Manufacturing companies are finding clever ways to try to conceal the fact that they are making products in smaller packages yet they are costing us more. Who would have thought that the term "half gallon of ice cream" would become an oxymoron in 2008 as most "half gallons" are a pint low now? There is little to no money left over for savings or investing. Jobs and homes are being lost at a record high rate. School districts are strained as to how to make up the budget deficits as the transportation departments now eat a huge chunk of available funds just gassing up the buses. Police departments are trying to offset the additional costs of keeping cruisers on the road. Even animal shelters are feeling the strain as pets are being surrendered in record numbers due to the economy.
We have many natural resources of energy that could be easily tapped such as wind, solar and wave. We also have many advanced technological resources available such as hybrid cars; plug in cars, and alternative fuels. There is obviously no easy and fast solution but we need to be proactive as a nation to devise a plan to incorporate all that is available to us to get ourselves out from under the iron grip of our dependence on foreign oil. We continue to pump hundreds of billions of American's hard earned dollars overseas to countries that hate us with each gallon of their oil we pump. We act dumbfounded as we are swept up in our economy as it goes down the tubes. We are an intelligent nation; we are a technologically advanced nation. We are a nation with the resources we need to end this but we are a nation without a plan.
I just purchased a newly released book by Jeff Wilson called "The Manhattan Project of 2009." What an eye-opener the revelations in this book are to me and should be to our nation at large.
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Mike 5:41PM (11/09/2008)
GM needs to go away! Their backward thinking can no longer be tolerated. Someone will pick up the pieces and make a productive car company out of them. Someone will redesign them so that every model they have does not look identical in the front end. Their design teams all need to be fired. A company like Toyota or Honda need to come in and clean up the mess.
I have no sympathy for any of the US automakers. They got themselves into this mess by creating junk and passing it on to the rest of us. Unions are also to blame for this mess. Someone installing windshields or tires, or doors on a car is NOT skilled labor. It's a monkey job, and monkeys should not be making $30.00 an hour gluing in windshields. It's ridiculous.
Nobody should be bailing out the Auto Industry. Time to sink or swim!!
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