It?s Delaware or White Marsh for a couple of hundred Baltimore General Motors? factory workers laid off since May 2005.
GM sent letters this week to 170 laid-off workers who once toiled at the now-closed GM van assembly plant in East Baltimore, a GM spokesman said Thursday. They can work at a GM plant Wilmington, Del.
Another 21 laid-off workers were offered jobs at GM?s White Marsh Allison Transmission Plant in Baltimore County, said Dan Flores, a labor and manufacturing spokesman for GM. The workers are members of the United Auto Workers union Local 239 in Baltimore.
Under the UAW contract, workers who were laid off when General Motors stopped building its Safari and Astro vans in the Baltimore plant became part of “job bank” labor pool who would be eligible for available jobs at other GM plants.
In Wilmington, GM recently began building the Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky two-seat convertible. GM plans an Opel version of the roadster for export to Europe, Flores said.
“We want the Baltimore workers to start flowing to the Wilmington plant by Aug. 21, when orientation begins,” Flores said. “We?re giving them some time to make up their minds.”
Officials with UAW Local 239 could not be reached for comment.
The most senior employees ? 21 in total ? at the shuttered van plant were offered jobs at the White Marsh Allison Transmission Plant, Flores said.
Under the UAW contract, the laid-off workers receive full pay and benefits as long as they remained part of the GM labor pool available for reassignment to other available jobs though they didn?t have to report towork every day, Flores said.
The workers can refuse a job offer once and remain in the pool, he said. If they refuse a second offer, they can no longer be employed by GM, Flores said.
