GM Wentzville plant to restart Monday

By JIM SALTER

updated 11:53 a.m. ET May 8, 2008

ST. LOUIS - Workers at a General Motors plant near St. Louis are going back to work starting Monday for the first time in about two months.

The Wentzville, Mo., plant has been shut down since March 6 due to a parts shortage caused by a strike at a parts supplier, American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. in Detroit.

About 2,300 United Auto Workers members are employed at the plant where full-size GMC Savana and Chevrolet Express vans are made.

GM spokesman Dan Flores said Thursday that the company found another source for the parts. He declined to elaborate.

"We're not getting into the specifics but we obviously have been able to secure enough components to secure regular production," Flores said.

UAW Local 2250 chairman Bill Schiltz said union leaders are concerned about where those parts are coming from.

"You're undermining the people at UAW and American Axle if you're bringing in parts from overseas," Schiltz said. The fact that the company isn't citing the source of the parts "tends to make you believe there's something they're not telling you," he said.

Still, Schiltz said Wentzville employees are eager to get back to work. For the past two months they've been getting about 80 percent of their regular pay from a combination of unemployment benefits and "sub-benefits," a special fund established to help workers through lean times.

All first-shift workers are due back at work Monday. Third-shift parts stamping workers return May 18. Second shift assembly workers return May 19.

Sales of GM's full-size vans declined sharply in April compared to a year ago, in part because of the parts shortage resulting from the strike.

Flores said a handful of facilities are back in operation, including pickup truck plants in Oshawa, Ontario, and Fort Wayne, Ind. The Arlington, Texas, plant that makes full-size SUVs resumes one shift starting next week.

"The American Axle strike is impacting more than 30 of our facilities in North America," Flores said. "Certainly we hope this is resolved sooner than later."

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