Miami Valley styles
Cold weather arrives
'Tis the Season Festival
Union boss says Delphi will close Moraine plant
Willie Thorpe believes it will happen next year, adds that work may go to Mexico.
Friday, September 22, 2006
KETTERING — Union leader Willie Thorpe expects that sometime next year, Delphi Corp. will close its Moraine automotive compressors factory and transfer production to Mexico.
Thorpe, chairman of the International Union of Electronic Workers-Communications Workers of America's Automotive Conference Board, is watching the painful impact of plant closings, worker layoffs, buyouts and retirements unfold.
Extras
About 600 of the Moraine plant's 850 workers have accepted buyout or early retirement offers to leave the work force by Jan. 1. It is the same plant where Thorpe, as president of the union's Local 801 in the 1990s, negotiated labor contracts for 3,400 members at that time.
"It's a nasty picture," Thorpe said. "We've had a lot of hurt in this."
Delphi spokesman Lindsey Williams said he cannot comment on the fate of Moraine or any other plant, because they are subject to negotiations with the unions and GM, Delphi's former owner.
The union's Automotive Conference Board in recent years has overseen 13 plants nationwide operated by General Motors Corp., diesel engine maker DMAX Ltd. and auto parts manufacturers Delphi, Valeo Inc. and Visteon Corp.
When auto industry cutbacks finally end, Thorpe anticipates that the number of plants his board oversees will have been reduced to eight.
