GM to create 650 jobs as sales increase

Source: Shanghai Daily
[08:59 January 24 2011]
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General Motors will add a shift and more than 650 jobs at its assembly plant in Flint, Michigan where it makes the hot-selling GMC Sierra and Chevrolet Silverado pickup trucks, a person familiar with the plan said January 22. The move is yet another sign that truck sales are on the rise for the recovering automaker.

The move comes as Chevy sales to small businesses have increased for three straight months, which GM says is an indication that small businesses across the country are beginning to reinvest.

The Detroit News has reported earlier about the additional jobs at the factory.

The plant, which employs more than 2,000 hourly and salaried workers, builds the heavy-duty Chevrolet and GMC Sierra crew and regular cab trucks and the light-duty Chevrolet Silverado crew and regular cab trucks.

The additional workers will come from GM's pool of laid-off workers, so no new employees will be hired, the person briefed on the announcement said. In the fourth quarter of last year, GM had about 3,500 laid-off workers in the pool nationwide.

There will be no added investment at the plant because GM is adding a third shift that will use the same equipment as the first two shifts.

The birthplace of GM, which sits 80 kilometers northwest of the company's headquarters in Detroit, Flint was once a powerful auto manufacturing town, but its economy and population have steadily declined over the past few decades. Flint -Assembly opened in 1947 when the city was in a much different situation.

But like other factories in the state and elsewhere in the United States, it is about to reap the benefits of the changing good fortunes of the domestic car industry.

Two months ago, General Motors announced a $163 million investment in a separate Flint plant as well as facilities in Bay City, Michigan, and an Ohio foundry to make small-car engines, and Chrysler said it was going to pump $843 million into three Indiana factories to build a new front-wheel-drive transmission.