ON THE LINE IN VAN NUYS : Southland’s Last Auto Assembly Plant Is Competing to Build General Motors’ 1992 Models in a Bid to Stay Alive

General Motors Corp. is considering moving production of Chevrolet Camaros and Pontiac Firebirds out of Van Nuys, a plan that could result in that plant’s shutdown and the indefinite layoff of 3,400 workers.

GM is deciding which of four assembly plants, including Van Nuys, will win the right to build the 1992 models of the Camaro and Firebird that would go into production in the summer of 1991. GM has said it will announce its selection by March, although some officials say the decision could be made as soon as the end of January.

Van Nuys is competing with plants in Oklahoma City, Pontiac, Mich., and Ste. Therese, Quebec. Each plant has formally petitioned GM headquarters in Detroit for the right to manufacture the F car, which is what company insiders call the Camaro and Firebird.

The Van Nuys plant has assembled Camaros and Firebirds since 1977, but its contract to build them runs out in the summer of 1991 and GM has not guaranteed the plant any work beyond then.

Lobbying Effort

Van Nuys plant manager Robert Stramy, United Auto Workers local President Jerry Shrieves and Cal Gutierrez, UAW shop chairman, traveled to Detroit in November to lobby GM executives to pick their plant. They left with no guarantee, a UAW official said.

“Pontiac is a very heavy contender,” said Joe Garcia, treasurer for UAW local 645 in Van Nuys. “A lot of sources say they are going to get it.”

Auto analysts and union officials say none of the plants is an obvious choice, although some think that the race is tightest between Van Nuys and the Pontiac plant, which has been idled since August.

GM has said its decision will be based on each plant’s quality and productivity records, as well as union-management relations.

“It’s going to be a very tough decision for this corporation to make,” said Dick Long, vice president with the UAW chapter in Pontiac.

The Van Nuys plant is the only remaining auto assembly plant in Southern California, and the impact of its shutdown would be felt throughout the San Fernando Valley.

GM declined requests for interviews and told Van Nuys officials not to comment. “They don’t want the allocation program discussed in public,” Stramy said.

Hoping for Revival

GM hopes new models of the Camaro and Firebird will revive sales. In November, 1983, 24,000 Camaros and Firebirds were sold. But last month, only about 13,000 of the cars were sold. GM closed its Norwood, Ohio, plant in August, 1987, because of low demand for the Camaro and Firebird.

“They’re definitely dinosaurs,” John Phillips III, senior editor of Automotive Magazine in Ann Arbor, Mich., said of the two car models. “It is an antiquated design.”

The plant review comes at a time when GM’s market share has fallen to 35% from 43% 5 years ago. The company is shrinking its production capacity. Ford has done well in recent years by limiting its production and at times has earned more money than GM even though GM is much bigger.

One thing the Van Nuys plant has going against it is its location. Three California auto plants have been closed since 1982 because auto makers said they could no longer afford the cost of shipping parts from Midwestern suppliers to the West Coast.

GM has said that if the same Camaros and Firebirds were built in a Midwestern plant, they would cost about $400 less than cars coming out of Van Nuys.

Making matters worse is that 75% to 85% of the cars manufactured in Van Nuys are shipped to dealers east of the Rockies. “They can build this car back East somewhere where they don’t have to ship the parts clear out here and then ship the cars back,” said Robert Colletta, a 24-year veteran of the Van Nuys plant. “It would be a lot cheaper.”

Selling Point

Indeed, the Pontiac assembly plant is using shipping costs as a major selling point in its bid to win the 1992 F cars. “We’re centrally located to most of the places that ship the parts to California,” Long said. “About 55% of the parts used in the Firebird and Camaro are within 150 miles” of the Pontiac plant.

The Van Nuys plant has been vulnerable to a shutdown since at least 1982, when workers were told that their plant was on the endangered list. Van Nuys eventually escaped that wave of plant closings, but GM has since repeatedly threatened the action.

Some workers at Van Nuys seem almost resigned to the idea that GM is going to start building the Camaro and Firebird elsewhere.

“There is nothing that I see that is optimistic for Van Nuys,” said Paul Goldener, a former union local president. “The whole attitude in the plant is that everybody knows Van Nuys was going to be shut down. It was just a matter of time.”

Rita Mary Bermudez, a 12-year veteran of the Van Nuys plant, attributes a large part of the plant’s apathy to GM’s previous threats. “We’ve been scared so much we don’t think about it any more,” she said.

GM executives are comparing Van Nuys’ record with that of its rivals in productivity, quality and labor relations. On at least two of those points, the Van Nuys plant has scored poorly.

Since May, 1987, employees at the Van Nuys plant have used a new, highly touted Japanese manufacturing method called Team Concept that was, in theory, supposed to improve the quality of cars rolling off the assembly line, help ensure job security and create a sense of camaraderie among workers.

Under the method, employees are organized into teams that work on entire sections of a car, with the power to stop the assembly line to fix defects and to make suggestions where needed.

But according to an August study conducted by J.D. Power & Associates, a respected Agoura Hills research firm, Team Concept has been a quality flop. The report said that Van Nuys had the second lowest quality rating of 21 GM plants in North America. The report concluded that the Van Nuys plant “will probably be shut down.”

Strained Relations

Besides failing to improve quality, Team Concept has greatly divided the local UAW chapter and severely strained union and management relations.

Team Concept was ratified in the spring of 1986 by a 53%-47% vote and workers have since been taking sides over the plan. Union meetings over Team Concept issues, including a controversial temporary layoff system, have sometimes ended with boos, hisses and name-calling.

“There has been so much internal turmoil in that union,” said Eric Mann, author of “Taking on General Motors, A Case Study of the UAW Campaign to Keep GM Van Nuys Open.”

There have also been problems between the UAW and local management in Van Nuys. Former UAW shop chairman Peter Z. Beltran filed a suit with the National Labor Relations Board in 1987 in an effort to prevent GM from implementing Team Concept. He lost, but along the way earned a large and loyal following of workers adamantly against the Japanese manufacturing method.

Earlier this year, GM rekindled resentment against Team Concept when it fired Beltran and another top union official, accusing them of lying about why Beltran was frequently absent from work. After grievances were filed with the UAW, GM reached a settlement with both men that gives them early retirement.

GM and the UAW maintain that they have overcome their labor problems. “The union’s relationship with the employees and management is very good,” Garcia said.

Better Records

However, other plants competing with Van Nuys have far better track records. For instance, the Pontiac plant, which made Pontiac Fieros, has been widely cited as a model of union-management cooperation.

One thing Van Nuys has going for it is that the other assembly plants are not familiar with producing Camaro or Firebird models. “The Van Nuys plant has experience on their side because they currently are building the car,” Long said.

Partly because of its know-how, the Van Nuys plant has been able to achieve a slightly above-average productivity rate, according to the J.D. Power survey.

But the Oklahoma City GM plant has earned one of the highest quality and productivity levels producing Buick Centuries and Chevrolet Celebrities, according to J. D. Power. Built in 1979, Oklahoma City is one of GM’s newest plants and can churn out about 80 cars an hour. In contrast, Van Nuys makes about 62 cars an hour.

Flexibility Touted

Van Nuys plant officials are trying not to bet their entire future on the Camaro and Firebird. When representatives from Van Nuys were in Detroit, they told GM executives that Van Nuys was capable of becoming a “flex” plant that could build different kinds of cars on short notice. “We could build a little bit of each kind of car depending on market demand,” Garcia said. “That would secure our future.”

But auto analysts say GM is not likely to convert the Van Nuys facility into a flex plant because of the amount of money it would take to retool the facility.

The problem is that the present Camaro and Firebird models have fallen out of favor with consumers and the automotive press.

“There is an enormous hood that sticks out that doesn’t need to. And there must be 200 pounds of glass in the hatchback door that covers a virtually unusable rear seat,” said Phillips of Automotive Magazine. “Its design is wasteful, gaudy and garish by today’s standards.”