L.A. County supervisors plead with GM to keep Van Nuys plant, save 4,000 jobs.

L.A. County supervisors plead with GM to keep Van Nuys plant, save 4,000 jobs

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, in a move to save the jobs of of 4,000 workers, has urged General Motors to convert its Van Nuys plant to an electric-car assembly line by 1993.

General Motors three weeks ago announced that all production work on the next generation of Chevrolet Camaros and Pontiac Firebirds would be moved from Van Nuys to a plant in Ste. Therese, Quebec, probably within the next few years. That prompted the Board of Supervisors, led by Michael Antonovich, to send a telegram to GM headquarters in Michigan calling for conversion of the 33-year-old facility.

"The closing of the facility would have a sizable impact on the San Fernando Valley and the economy," Antonovich said, estimating a shutdown could cost the region hundreds of million of dollars in business. "If GM is going to have a major production of electric cars, the Van Nuys site would be an appropriate facility," he said.

The GM facility currently employs about 3,500 blue-collar workers from the United Auto Workers Local 645 and roughly 400 management-level jobs. It also generates an additional 20,000 retail, service and transit jobs in Southern California, according to GM's West Coast spokesman Paul Crook.

Antonovich said the telegram, intended to grab the attention of GM decision makers and remind them of their "civic responsibility," had little formal power. "If nothing else," he said, "it indicates that government representatives of the 10 million people in Los Angeles County are concerned about keeping the plant open."

That concern, however, may not be at the top of agenda of GM decision makers, according to one analyst.

"We have more plants and workers than we need and I think GM already gets their share of letters," said Charles Brady, an analyst with Oppenheimer and Co. Inc., a New York-based research and money management outfit. "The idea to build electric cars is great, but I don't California is the best place to build them because phenomenal demand for the car in other parts of the country could create distribution problems."

GM officials have indicated that the Van Nuys plant could become the company's first "flex plant," allowing GM to simultaneously build several different models of cars that could sell briskly on the West Coast. The details, however, remain sketchy. The exact date that the Quebec plant will start assembling the new Camaros and Firebirds, and the types of cars the Van Nuys plants might produce, remain tentative, Crook said.

"We want to build anything we can to stay open. This is an extremely good work force and the quality [of cars being produced] is the best it's ever been here," Crook added. The plant, using components brought in from all parts of the country, currently builds 672 Camaros and Firebirds a day.

Crook said a variety of new models could be produced at a flex plant but would not say which ones were being considered in the business plan submitted to GM officials. And the possibility the plant could build an electric car -- like the prototype Impact that GM Chairman Roger Smith demonstrated earlier in the year -- is also uncertain, Crook said.

"We are very optimistic we'll have a strong case for a flex facility capable of assembling several vehicles for the western states market," said GM corporate spokesman Kathy Tanner in Detroit. "But we haven't disclosed when we'll produce an electric car."

The Ste. Therese plant, operated by GM of Canada Ltd., currently assembles the Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera and the Chevrolet Celebrity. In order to produce the 1993 model Camaro and Firebird, the plant will undergo a $100 million retooling.

Through April 20 this year, 1990 sales of Camaros and Firebirds dropped 35 percent and 39.6 percent respectively, compared with the same period in 1989. Seven GM plants have closed permanently or been slated for shutdown since 1988.