The regional economy is getting a major shot in the arm.
General Motors Co. announced Tuesday that it will add a third shift and 700 jobs to its Allen County assembly plant by April. The Defiance, Ohio, foundry also is likely to add jobs, although company officials couldn’t say how many.
In the face of improving sales and declining inventories, the GM executive committee decided Tuesday to add 2,400 jobs at assembly plants in Fort Wayne, Fairfax, Kan., and Lansing, Mich. It also is adding 600 jobs at stamping plants and engine-casting plants such as the Defiance Foundry.
The positions likely will be filled by GM workers who have been laid off from other factories.
"We expect all of the openings will be filled by existing employees," GM Vice President Tim Lee said in a conference call with reporters.
Even though GM will fill most – if not all – of the new jobs by importing workers from elsewhere, they’ll still be a boon to the area economy, said Orval Plumlee, president of UAW Local 2209, which represents production workers at the Allen County assembly plant.
"We will have 700 workers relocating and joining our community," Plumlee said.
That will result in more people buying area homes, shopping in area stores and eating in area restaurants.
Employment at the Allen County plant peaked this year around 2,700, but after two rounds of buyouts, cuts in the salaried workforce and normal attrition, the head count at the Allen County plant stands at 2,400, spokeswoman Alicia Kocher said.
The addition of a shift will bring the workforce up to about 3,100 – the most the plant has ever employed, said Scott Landsra, lead area manager at the Allen County assembly plant.
Many of the new workers at the Allen County assembly plant will come from Pontiac, Mich., where a heavy-duty truck plant is slated to be idled in weeks, putting 1,100 employees out of work.
GM this summer announced plans to spend $46 million retooling its assembly lines in Allen County to add heavy-duty Chevrolet Silverados and GMC Sierras to the light-duty versions of the vehicles the plant makes.
Workers at the closing Pontiac plant will get priority for the jobs being added in Fort Wayne. Laid-off GM workers in the region are next in line, and then laid-off workers nationwide will be given a crack at those positions, Lee said.
As the Obama administration shepherded GM through bankruptcy this summer, it required the automaker to close plants and dealerships, reduce its brands and find other efficiencies. The Allen County plant came out on the winning side of that effort.
GM is investing in the plant so it will produce trucks around the clock. That’s a more efficient use of its facilities, Landsra said.
"Right now, we’re building all the light-duty trucks we can possibly build on two shifts," Landsra said.
Adding a shift will enable the Allen County plant to increase its production by a third, to about 300,000 trucks a year, Landsra said.
Tuesday’s announcement was in stark contrast to an earlier one this summer, when workers at the Allen County plant were furloughed for 10 weeks – longer than any other GM assembly plant. At the time, GM said it needed to sell off bloated inventories.
GM Vice President Mark LaNeve said Tuesday that inventories of cars and trucks disappeared faster than anyone expected.
With 378,000 vehicles at the end of August, "it’s the lowest since we’ve been keeping records," LaNeve said.
And as the economy recovers, truck sales tend to accelerate, LaNeve said.
