GM Announces Jobs Plan Ahead of Donald Trump's Michigan Speech
March 15 2017 - 12:15PM
Dow Jones News
By Mike Colias
YPSILANTI, Mich. -- General Motors Co. handed President Donald
Trump a welcome-back gift Wednesday, announcing plans to hire and
retain employees in Michigan just hours before his first visit back
to the state since voters there helped carry him to the White
House.
GM, in the process of laying off workers in the Midwest in
response to slumping passenger-car demand, said it would add 220
new jobs to one Michigan plant and eventually hire back 680 of the
laid-off workers at another factory in the state.
Before his inauguration, Mr. Trump criticized the Detroit auto
giant's strategy of shipping certain products from Mexico to the
U.S., but changed his tone after GM made a separate jobs
announcement in mid-January.
Mr. Trump will travel to Michigan Wednesday afternoon to
announce the reopening of a review of fuel-economy standards, which
many auto executives argue are unattainable in an era of cheap
gasoline. The Trump administration is also moving to make
adjustments to trade, including revisiting the North American Free
Trade Agreement, and that move is also expected to affect auto
makers.
GM's new announcement and Mr. Trump's focus on auto
manufacturing and emissions rules underscores the public role the
car business is playing in the new administration's early days. GM
Chief Executive Mary Barra is on a CEO panel advising Mr. Trump on
economic matters and she is expected to be among about a dozen
automotive executives who will meet with him Wednesday before he
delivers his speech.
The speech will be given at a former assembly plant in
Ypsilanti, Mich., and thousands of auto workers are expected to
attend.
The central topic Mr. Trump will address is emissions
regulation, announcing the resumption of a review of more-stringent
fuel economy targets that the Obama administration had decided to
finalize a week before Inauguration Day. The president is also
likely to highlight the U.S. job commitments that GM, Ford Motor
Co. and Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles NV have recently made following
his public pressure on the companies to create U.S. jobs.
Thanking Detroit's three auto makers has become a common theme
in Mr. Trump's public remarks.
The 220 jobs GM said Wednesday that it will add are at a
transmission plant in Romulus, Mich., just a few miles from the
site of Mr. Trump's speech. GM also said it would eventually bring
back about 680 of the 1,100 workers that it said last week would be
laid off at a plant in Lansing, Mich.
Some of those reinstated jobs will be directed to factory in
Flint, Mich., which assembles large pickup trucks. The bulk will be
rehired at the Lansing plant in the first quarter of 2018, GM
said.
"The job commitments announced today demonstrate the confidence
we have in our products, our people and an overall positive outlook
for the auto industry and the U.S. economy," Ms. Barra said.
This follows separately announced plans in January by GM, Ford
and Chrysler to add or retain thousands of factory jobs --
commitments that came in the wake of critical Twitter messages from
Mr. Trump vowing to tax the Mexican imports that each of those
companies rely on to boost U.S. sales and pad profits in North
America.
The companies have said the job moves were long planned and not
a direct response to the political climate. There have been bumps
along the way, however.
GM in recent months has disclosed plans to lay off about 4,400
workers across factories in Ohio and Michigan, including the
Lansing plant. The redeployment of those 680 workers from the
Lansing factory brings the tally of job losses to about 3,800
people.
Fiat Chrysler has been idling workers in certain U.S. locations
as it scrambles to rejigger its product portfolio to better match
customer trends.
Write to Mike Colias at Mike.Colias@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 15, 2017 12:00 ET (16:00 GMT)
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