TOLEDO, Ohio — The sting from a major restructuring at General Motors and its planned closings of five North American factories in the coming months is putting thousands of jobs at auto parts suppliers at stake, as well.
While GM expects nearly all its U.S. blue-collar workers whose jobs are being eliminated to have an opportunity at relocating to factories that are adding jobs, that won’t be the case for many in the supply chain who make parts, drive trucks, work in warehouses and keep GM’s plants operating.
For most of them, there is no safety net.
“There’s nowhere to transfer. They’ve got nowhere to go. They’re just out of work,” said Dave Green, a union leader near Youngstown where GM in early March plans to shut down its factory that makes the Chevrolet Cruze compact car.
GM’s labor agreements guarantee its workers transfer rights and relocation money, but that’s not true for the wide majority of suppliers, even where the workers are represented by unions.
“We’ve been lost in the shuffle,” said Brian Shina, who lost his supplier plant job when GM cut a shift at its Lordstown factory in May, months before announcing plans to close it. “We don’t have any leverage here.”
The dominoes already are starting to fall. A plant that makes seats for the Cruze and another business that does logistics and warehousing work for GM in Ohio will close in March, too. Just three years ago, those two had a combined 800 workers.
Green has compiled a list of more than 50 other businesses whose work is tied to the Ohio assembly plant. But it’s difficult to know how many could be forced to cut jobs because many do work for other auto plants and industries.
Despite varying estimates, some economists project that for every auto plant job that is lost, three or four additional positions are eliminated.