About 275 temporary employees, including some 25 at the Bowling Green Corvette Assembly Plant in Kentucky, are caught in the middle of a labor dispute at General Motors.
GM recently sent letters to local UAW leaders, informing them if they didn’t sign letters agreeing to keep the workers as part-time temporary workers instead of making them full-time temps or permanent, they would be let go by the end of September, according to a story in the Detroit Free-Press.
The shop chairmen at Bowling Green and at Fort Wayne Assembly in Indiana, where Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks are built, have so far declined to sign the letters.
But GM spokeswoman Tara Kuhnen, in a statement issued last week, says without those signed agreements, provisions of the 2019 National UAW-GM contract allow the release of the temporary employees at the two plants. In fact, the temps at Bowling Green have already received a letter saying Sept. 27, 2024 would be their last day, and the 250 temps at Fort Wayne have been told they would be let go Sept. 30, 2024. We haven’t been able to confirm whether GM has followed through on the dismissals.
However, GM is “basically wanting to strong-arm the members and the local unions and wanting to hold these part-timers in part-time status,” says UAW Local 2164 Chairman Jason Watson in Bowling Green.
Watson says GM maintains it doesn’t need the temps at Bowling Green and wants to cut costs, but Watson contends the workers are needed, adding there are full-time openings at the Corvette facility.
“GM told the plant manager he can have up to 80 full-time temps going forward for the next quarter when we started talking about it,” Watson said. “But he is not willing and wants to keep them part-time.”
As a union, however, Watson argues that “we’re not going to allow you to string these people along as part-time when you can make them full-time.”
Watson says the plant is “still understaffed with the amount of seniority people we contend we’re supposed to have in the building.”
He’s especially concerned about the upcoming launch of the 2025 Corvette ZR1, noting “when you first launch a product it takes plenty of manpower.”
Source:
Detroit Free Press
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Worked at an Aircraft Mfg’r for 54 years & 22 days under Union contacts before retiring. I can absolutely state I wouldn’t believe a single word spoken by GM management in this dispute!!!!!!!
But the ZR1 will have limited availability as GM says
Again??? Come on GM get your head out of your ass.
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