General Motors is just hours from shutting down its Moraine, Ohio, and Janesville, Wisconsin, assembly plants. As we’ve previously reported, the two plants are being closed in a cost-savings and inventory-reducing move for the struggling Detroit automaker. Most Janesville workers punched out for the last time last night and Moraine workers will clock out once and for all tonight.
The Moraine plant produced the Chevrolet Trailblazer, GMC Envoy and Saab 9-7x, while the Janesville plant produced the Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban, GMC Yukon and Yukon XL and medium-duty trucks for Isuzu.
The Janesville plant will continue producing trucks for Isuzu using a skeleton crew through June, after which it will shut its doors. It was GM’s oldest continuously operating plant, having opened to automobile production in 1919.
The UAW assembly plant workers will not be eligible for the union’s “jobs bank,” which provided at least 85 percent of wages for up to two years for laid-off workers. The UAW eliminated the benefit as a concession to receive the $17.4 billion federal loan package the Bush Administration granted on Friday.
