GM to invest $877 million to upgrade assembly plant in Flint

As Detroit-Three-UAW contract talks kick into high gear, General Motors announced Tuesday it would invest $877 million in its Flint, Mich., pickup truck assembly plant.

“The products, the workforce, the partnership between the UAW and GM, the need to increase and improve our technology and focus on the customer”, said Clegg.

New paint shops at the truck plants also could allow GM to build vehicles that are larger than the current models, and cut costs at the same time, company officials said.

General Motors is putting big money into some big upgrades at its Flint, Michigan plant.

The new body shop will be located close to the existing Flint Metal Center, which supplies sheet metal and other parts to the production facility. A joint venture in China said this year that it plans to spend $16 billion by 2020 to expand in that market, and GM in March said it will put $5 billion into plants in Mexico. “This investment not only strengthens the ties between GM and the city, it demonstrates that Flint continues to play an important role in the resurgence of manufacturing in Michigan and the rest of the United States”.

“This announcement is due to the hard work and dedication of our UAW members in Flint”, said UAW Vice President Cindy Estrada, who leads the UAW GM department, in a statement. Still the $877 million remains the largest investment GM has made in Flint in 30 years.

“This investment will allow us to use a more innovative approach to deliver material between two critical facilities, reducing handling and the time it takes to ship parts”, Cathy Clegg, vice president of GM North America manufacturing and labor relations, said today in a statement. The plant employs 2,573 hourly workers. The other is in Fort Wayne, IN where GM will invest $1.2 billion. The factory’s “View Builds” enable customers to watch heavy-duty Sierra truck that is now being assembled and moved from the assembly line, following some quality checks. That plant builds full-size light- and heavy-duty Silverados and Sierras.