By Mike Lewis, Times-Mail
mikel@tmnews.com
BEDFORD - A few more details are emerging about how General Motors' extended summer shutdowns will affect workers at Bedford's GM Powertrain plant.
The advice from the local union chief is to be flexible.
"All this is subject to change," said Scott Moore, president of UAW Local 440 in Bedford. "It's based on car sales."
GM Thursday announced plans to temporarily close 13 assembly plants in the United States and Mexico, as well as related facilities such as the Powertrain facories. The closures will start in May. They vary by factory from as short as three weeks to as long as 11, including the normal two-week July shutdown.
On Thursday, Fred Cox, communications manager for the Indianapolis Stamping Plant and the Bedford Powertrain Plant, said the Bedford facility will be shut down for five weeks - three weeks in June before the July shutdown.
Union and management officials have been meeting at the Bedford facility to share information. And on Saturday, Moore said the timetable is more complicated.
The Bedford plant has two main operations. The die cast section produces transmission casings for a wide variety of vehicles. It also casts blocks for the NorthStar engines used in Cadillacs. The second main operation produces pistons.
For the die cast section, Moore said, "It will be a total of four weeks. Two of that will be our normal shutdown.
"The piston department could be six to eight weeks. I think that's going to be additional time. So that could be eight to 10 weeks, total."
Moore said the precise timing has not been determined.
"Many times, you just don't know until a week or two beforehand," he said.
Supplemental pay
During a normal July shutdown, the car company changes to a new model year. Moore said that, during that time, GM workers typically take a week of vacation and one week of what's called "bank time." The bank provides payments to workers while the factory is not producing.
For this year's extended shutdown, laid-off hourly workers will get unemployment benefits and supplemental pay from the company that amounts to most of their base wages. Salaried workers also will get some income, said GM North America President Troy Clarke.
Supplemental pay varies with the pay scale, Moore said, but it provides "about 85 percent of take-home pay."
Inventory
Moore said that, from glancing at the list of plants and shutdown times, is appears truck and SUV assembly factories will be closed the longest.
"What they're doing is trying to size their output to what's actually going on in the market," Moore said.
For example, the longest shutdown - 11 weeks - is at the Fort Wayne assembly plant, which makes Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups.
In a prepared statement announcing the shutdowns, GM said it hopes the closing will whittle away its large inventory
"We're taking aggressive steps to accelerate our inventory initiatives that have worked well since the first of the year. While sales have been performing at or close to our plan estimates, and dealer inventories have been reduced accordingly, we want to more closely align inventories with even more conservative market assumptions," Clarke said. "By reducing our inventories even more aggressively we reduce pressure on GM and our dealers, and set ourselves up well for a clean 2010 model year start-up."
At the end of March, GM reported, approximately 767,000 vehicles were in U.S. dealer stock. That is down about 108,000 vehicles (or 12 percent) compared to the same period last year, and down 105,000 vehicles from year-end 2008.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.