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UAW Criticizes GM Over Shutdown of Muncie, Indiana Battery Plant

25 March 1998

UAW Criticizes GM Over Shutdown of Muncie, Indiana Battery Plant

    DETROIT, March 25 -- GM's recent announcement that
battery production has begun in a new factory in Saudi Arabia drew criticism
from UAW Vice President Richard Shoemaker in light of GM's plan to consolidate
a Delphi Automotive System's battery operation in Muncie, Indiana into
operations in Olathe, Kansas and Fitzgerald, Georgia.  The consolidation of
the Muncie operation will result in the dislocation of about 300 UAW-
represented workers.
    "By opening a new battery plant in Saudi Arabia while closing a battery
plant in the U.S., GM continues to undermine the already shaky relationship
between the company and the UAW," said Shoemaker, who directs the UAW General
Motors Department.
    "How can workers believe there is any benefit to them from efforts to
improve profitability when the company invests billions of dollars in profits
in overseas plants and shuts down factories here in the U.S.," Shoemaker
declared, continuing, "This transfer of capital, jobs and technology to
foreign production sites is further evidence of GM's detachment from the needs
of their U.S. workers, communities and families."
    "It's another example of their 'America-last' strategy," Shoemaker stated.
    "The UAW members at the Muncie battery plant made concerted efforts to
improve profitability," Shoemaker pointed out, adding, "Now the workers are
being repaid not with investment in new technology, but with plant closure and
disruption of their families and their community."
    "The state-of-the-art  battery plant in Saudi Arabia will export
throughout the Middle East and supplant production that formerly came from the
United States and Europe," Shoemaker said.
    "Investing overseas may play well on Wall Street but it has the opposite
impact where it really counts, in the workplaces and communities here in the
U.S." he said, concluding, "GM may be putting record profits in the bank, but
they are drawing their respect and credibility among their unionized workforce
and the community down toward zero.

SOURCE  UAW