DETROIT — General Motors will invest $245 million and eventually hire 300 workers at one of its Michigan assembly plants to build the Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicle and another new unnamed model, the company said Monday morning.
“Orion Assembly is a breeding ground for manufacturing innovation,” said Cathy Clegg, vice president of GM North America manufacturing and labor relations, in a statement about the plant, located about 30 miles north of Detroit. “It serves as a model for how to engage the entire workforce at all levels to achieve success.”
Today about 1,580 hourly and 180 salaried workers assemble the Chevrolet Sonic and Buick Verano at the plant. But a combination of moderately low gas prices and Americans’ preference for larger vehicles have hurt sales of the two compact sedan sales.
Sonic sales through May are down 28.5 percent from a year earlier, while Verano sales have fallen about 16 percent in the same period.
Earlier this month GM reduced production and said about 100 workers would be laid off at the plant over the remainder of 2015.
Clegg said the $245 million investment would be concentrated in the body shop where precisely programmed robots weld the basic structure of a vehicle together. But the “all new vehicle program” would lead to 300 new jobs.
Asked why the company chose not to identify the second new vehicle for Orion, Clegg said GM didn’t want to announce a name for competitive reasons.
The Bolt is scheduled to go on sale sometime in 2017, which means much of the tooling and equipment to be purchased with the $245 million investment announced Monday, would be installed next year.
GM’s first all-electric vehicle, the Bolt is expected to have a range of 200 miles on one full charge and be priced at about $30,000 after a $7,500 federal tax credit.
United Automobile Workers Local 5960 agreed to several changes in its local contract, including allowing GM to hire new workers earning a lower second-tier wage to fill as many as 40 percent of the hourly jobs in the plant. That provision led GM to select Orion to produce the Sonic and Verano.
Unlike 2011 when General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler decided to invest in certain factories after it hammered out a four-year national agreement with the UAW, GM this year is outlining $5.4 billion of upgrades at 40 U.S. manufacturing sites.
Clegg said the timing is the result of ongoing discussions with the UAW that aren’t necessarily dependent on terms of a new labor agreement. The current national contract of the Detroit Three and the UAW expires Sept. 15 at midnight.
The Orion plant was close to being shuttered in the wake of GM’s 2009 bankruptcy.
Cindy Estrada, vice president of the UAW’s General Motors department, said the turnaround was mainly due to the quality and hard work of Local 5960 members.
“It it weren’t for you this would not be happening,” Estrada told about 100 workers gathered for the announcement in the plant Monday morning.
Both Clegg and Estrada said the announcement of the unnamed new vehicle was not contingent on raising the proportion of second-tier workers in the plant.
“We know we need to do more to bridge the gap,” Estrada said, referring to the difference between wages and benefits between those workers hired before and after 2007.
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