DETROIT (AP) – If they can close our plant, they can close yours, too.
That’s the message from workers at three shuttered General Motors factories that didn’t get new products under the tentative contract agreement reached last week between GM and the United Auto Workers, who have been on strike against the company across the U.S. for over six weeks now.
About 2,000 employees who once worked at GM transmission plants near Baltimore and Detroit and a small-car assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio, will repeat that message this week as 49,000 union members vote on the new four-year deal.
Approval could end the walkout that has crippled GM’s production and cost the company an estimated $2 billion.
Most of the workers who lost their jobs at the three sites are scattered across the country after transferring to other GM factories, so they have a presence at just about all of the automaker’s plants.