GM and CAW reach deal over truck plant closure

[palema]

In a deal designed to assuage the tensions between General Motors and the Canadian Auto Workers union, GM's new car plant in Oshawa, Ontario will gain two additional models to build. The old truck plant in the same city, though, will still close sometime in 2009. Until then, the truck plant will continue to assemble hybrid versions of GM's full-size pickup trucks. The new Oshawa plant will begin building GM's long-anticipated Camaro revival and will also get some Chevrolet Impala production and an unnamed Buick model at some point in the future.

In addition to the extra work at the brand new Oshawa plant, displaced workers with at least 26 years of GM employment will get a percentage of their yearly salary, even after the plant has closed, until they have reached the necessary 30-year mark for retirement. Other qualifying ex-employees will get buyout packages of some sort. Thanks for the tip, Ryan!

[logansowner]

Yea guys, ya see trucks are no longer profitable, but don't worry, we'll pay you for doing nothing.

Union supporter: You better, we deserve it, you're just trying to keep us down, we are hard working as deserve money for nothing. How can you think we would be like normal citizens and be out of a job when we weren't needed? That is crazy...we expect money no matter what.

So now they are going to end up making a bunch of Silverado hybrids that nobody will buy anyway.

Last I checked, when a company is forced to cut back, people suffer, but not if you're an auto worker, that's better than being Jesus.

[vcs2600]

Nope, GM "committed" to the plant during union negotiations and then turned around and shut it down a couple weeks later.

Also if you read between the lines here, the union didn't get anything ... except another empty "commitment".

[zete]

Unnamed Buick? Wouldn't that end up on Zeta, then?

Man, all this Zeta on/off talk has gotten me mega confused.

[palema]