UAW leader says GM Rochester plant could manufacture car parts currently made abroad
ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The Wall Street Journal reports one of the ideas behind the tariffs is to force companies to bring manufacturing jobs back to America. That idea took Chief Investigative Reporter Berkeley Brean to the front doors of the local General Motors plant.
“There’s the GM Rochester sign behind me here at Lexington and Mt. Read. I came here to find out if there are car parts being made around the world that could be made here and how long it would take to do that,” Brean said.
Dan Maloney, the head of the UAW at GM Rochester, says there are car parts being made in Ontario and Mexico right now that could be made in Rochester.
Berkeley Brean, News10NBC: “Dan are there car parts being made in Ontario and Mexico right now that you could make here?”
Dan Maloney, UAW GM Rochester: “Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s what we do. We make components for General Motors in this facility next to us.”
Berkeley Brean: “How quickly could you do that for stuff that’s not made here right now?”
Dan Maloney: “If they gave us the resources, they being General Motors, and maybe with some incentives from the government we could have stuff turned around quick. In 2006 we moved an entire fuel injection factory in from Coopersville, Michigan inside the plant within the plant in six months.”
Berkeley Brean: “Are there parts being made in China and Taiwan and the rest of the world that you could make here?”
Dan Maloney: “Yes. And a lot of the products we used to make in this plant have been out-sourced to Mexico, China and other countries.”
When asked if he’s hearing anything about parts coming back to Rochester because of tariffs, Maloney said it’s too soon to tell.
Maloney says there are 600 to 700 UAW workers in Rochester right now. When he started the job 40 years ago there were 11,000 in Rochester.
In February, Gm said it was going to lay off 25 people at the Rochester GM plant by the end of March. GM says it’s adding workers in Indiana to make more light duty pick-up trucks. Stellantis, which owns Chrysler, says it’s pausing some production in Mexico and Canada because of tariffs but it’s also temporarily laying off 900 American workers.
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