Today 1700 people in Lordstown, Ohio are searching for a new job. The workers at the General Motors plant officially built their last car on Wednesday. The end of this era not only impacts the people who worked at the plant but it also the entire community, from restaurants to stores the economy revolved around GM. Some residents are speaking out now against GM and Donald Trump.
“This was a blue country before President Trump came through here and promised to, you know, don’t sell your houses, all these jobs are going to come back. Well we haven’t seen that here, we’ve only seen jobs leave.”
WATCH: The local union leader at the GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio says that Trump broke his promise to bring auto jobs back to the area. pic.twitter.com/AATcF5qZ9x
— DNC Press (@dncpress) March 6, 2019
This is corporate greed at its worst. GM is shutting down production even earlier than expected—putting the people who have made this company a success out of a job. It is unacceptable. The workers deserve better than this. https://t.co/AsXN5rKYDD
— Sherrod Brown (@SherrodBrown) March 6, 2019
General Motors plant closures are forcing autoworkers to make an impossible decision: leave behind children, families, and homes to transfer to a factory hundreds of miles away, or lose their jobs permanently. https://t.co/TGQgo2FiGi
— UAW (@UAW) March 5, 2019
President Donald Trump and a coalition of Ohio lawmakers have been pressuring the automaker to find a way to bring new work to the plant, which employed 4,500 people just two years ago but has been down to one shift since last summer.
Trump has shown a particular interest in the Lordstown plant, singling it out as one he wants to stay open. It’s in area of the state that will be important to him in the 2020 election, and it’s where he told supporters at a rally last year that manufacturing jobs are coming back.
Company President Mark Reuss said in January that GM is looking at a lot of different options for the plant, but it hasn’t decided whether Lordstown could get a new vehicle.
Lordstown’s history dates back to 1966. More than 16 million vehicles have come off its assembly line since then, including nearly 1.9 million Cruzes.
The automaker has said most of its blue-collar workers whose jobs are eliminated in the U.S. will be able to transfer to plants in the Midwest and South.
The other plants slated to close this year are assembly plants in Detroit and Oshawa, Ontario, and transmission plants in Warren, Mich., and near Baltimore.
Watch above as CBS documented the last shift at the plant.
