[SmithR]

General Motors announced that they have temporarily stopped Blazer production in Mexico due to a parts shortage. It’s the result of the month-long UAW strike.

Let's see how long Blazer production is halted because of the strike. If anyone has orders coming in you might have to wait a bit more.

Here's the full breakdown from the Detroit Free Press:

The UAW's strike against General Motors continues to impact the automaker's global production despite the two sides having reached a tentative contract agreement.

GM has temporarily halted production of its new 2020 Chevrolet Blazer SUV in Mexico due to a parts shortage from the UAW nationwide strike, a GM spokesman said.

But the automaker restarted production of the Chevrolet Impala sedan in Canada on Friday.

It all comes on news that the automaker plans a series of electric trucks, including SUVs and possibly restarting the Hummer brand at its Detroit-Hamtramck plant.

Mexico manufacturing
GM halted production Friday at its Ramos Arizpe Vehicle Assembly in Mexico, said GM spokesman Dan Flores.

"Production of the Blazer will be down until the strike is done," said Flores. "But production of the (Chevrolet) Equinox is running normally at Mexico and Canada plants."

About 46,000 UAW workers went on strike at 55 GM facilities in 10 states at 12:01 a.m. on Sept. 16. They reached a tentative contract agreement with GM on Wednesday and have until Oct. 25 to vote to ratify or reject it. Its National GM Council voted to remain on strike until the contract is ratified by the membership.

GM's decision to build the Blazer in Mexico instead of a U.S. plant was a sore point with the UAW, as is low-cost Mexican production in general.

GM builds its top-selling SUV, the Equinox, at its San Luis Potosi plant in Mexico and in Ontario. Also built at San Luis Potosi is the GMC Terrain and Chevrolet Trax. Production at San Luis Potosi continues, Flores said.

On Friday, GM was able to resume building the Impala sedan at its Oshawa plant in Ontario, sending some 750 employees back to work. The Impala car production and production of the previous generation model GMC Sierra and Chevrolet Silverado pickups was halted just days after the UAW's strike against GM started.

The pickup lines remain down, said Flores, but GM has enough parts to restart production of the Impala and complete its built-out of it in the next two weeks. The plant is scheduled to shutter at year-end.

The Impala, along with the Chevrolet Cruze, Chevrolet Volt and Buick LaCrosse are being discontinued. All the vehicles are sedans and consumer sentiment has shifted to prefer pickups and SUVs. The Chevrolet Malibu sedan will continue, GM has said. But the fate of the Cadillac CT6 is undetermined, said Flores.

Days after the strike started, some 4,500 GM workers in Canada were temporarily laid off. That includes 1,200 workers at GM's truck assembly plant in Oshawa, they remain temporarily laid off.

Oshawa’s stamping operation continues to run. It stamps sheet metal for Ontario's CAMI plant.

 

[JimC]

This strike has been nuts to follow, let's see what happens when UAW votes on the tentative agreement on Friday.

 

[SmithR]

It looks like GM and UAW will likely reach a deal today to end the strike.

The long General Motors strike is finally over, as workers approve labor deal

The long General Motors strike is finally over, as members of the United Auto Workers union voted in favor of a four-year labor deal to end the walkout.

www.cnn.com

New York (CNN Business)It appears the end of the long General Motors strike is at hand.

There are a few hours left for the rank-and-file to vote on a tentative labor contract that would end the walkout, but the votes announced so far are strongly in favor of the deal.

There are several large union locals that represent workers at some of GM's bigger plants that have yet to announce results or even complete the voting process. But they would have to vote overwhelmingly against the deal for it to be defeated. Votes can be submitted up to 4 pm Friday.

If more than 50% of the members who vote approve the contract, it will be approved and strikers will return to work.

The strike by nearly 50,000 hourly GM workers started Sept. 16, nearly five weeks ago. It is the largest against a US business since the last GM strike 12 years ago. But that strike was over in less than three days. This strike is the longest auto industry work stoppage in more than 20 years. GM has lost about $1.75 billion due to the walkout, according to an estimate from Anderson Economic Group, a Michigan research firm.

The deal was reached between union and company negotiators more than a week ago, although members stayed on the picket line until the ratification process could be completed.

Strikers have received strike benefits of only $275 a week. That's far below the more than $30 an hour that veteran UAW members make.

The new contract would pay strikers an $11,000 signing bonus, which should help them recoup much of their lost wages, although GM was offering a signing bonus even before the strike started. Under the proposed deal, wages for most veteran workers will rise by 6% during the four-year life of the contract to $32.32 an hour. And the union got the company to drop its demand that workers pay a larger percentage of their own health care costs.

But the union failed in its efforts to save three plants -- an assembly line in Lordstown, Ohio, and transmission plants in Warren, Michigan, and Baltimore, where GM halted operations earlier this year. The union wanted GM to shift some of its production from Mexico, where the company built more than 800,000 cars and trucks last year, back to US plants, but GM refused.
While most of the autoworkers at those three plants have found jobs at other GM factories, many had to relocate to take those jobs. Anger among both union leadership and rank-and-file about those plant closings raised doubts about whether this labor deal would pass. But after five weeks on the picket lines, workers were apparently willing to accept the closings for a chance to get back to work.

 

[JimC]

That's great news! Hopefully Chevy can get right back on production and make up for the lost time.

 

[Blender]

I work for a company that supplies car parts to dealerships.. We just had out best ever month in terms of volume in company history. Based off of what some of the parts managers at GM dealerships are saying they expect to still be backed up 2-4 weeks while GM works to try and get supplies back to dealerships across the states. Not sure if that will have an effect on how fast they can get production up on the Blazer. I hope so because I feel like I'm the only Blazer on the road here in MN.