This meeting's topic will be sales and marketing.

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Joe Brown

“It gives us an opportunity to save these jobs and this plant,’’ said Maurice “Mo” Davison, director of UAW Region 3 in Indianapolis.

UAW Local 23 in Indianapolis had refused to itself open wage concessions with potential bidder JD Norman Industries of Addison, Ill.

Today, Local 23 officials urged the union’s head office in Detroit to conduct the negotiations and present a proposed offer for a vote by stamping plant employees.

Davison, who represents the union’s Detroit office in Indiana and Kentucky, said union staff in Detroit, Norman Industries and GM will conduct negotiations in Detroit “as soon as possible.”

Davison said the proposal would be presented to stamping plant employees for a vote this year, but he wasn’t sure when.

Norman Industries of Addison, Ill., has discussed buying the 850-employee plant from GM, but wanted a commitment from Local 23 to renegotiate the master labor contract.

UAW Local 23 officials had been reluctant to open talks but today agreed to start those negotiations during a meeting with Justin Norman, an Illinois entrepreneur, and UAW Region 3 director in Indianapolis. The meeting was organized by U.S. Rep. Andre Carson, D-7th District, and took place in his Indianapolis office, an aide said

GM has scheduled the closure of the Near Westside plant by October 2011.

Norman, owner of metal stamping businesses in the Chicago and Cleveland areas and Mexico, had expressed a willingness to buy the facility and produce auto parts for GM and other carmakers.

Read the rest of thie article        here.       

Old Carco sold the metal-stamping plant in Twinsburg, Ohio, to Maynards Industries Ltd. of Vancouver, BC, Canada, but the AP said the liquidation company has been unable to attract new businesses to the site and that it will auction the plant's equipment and other assets after it closes, as scheduled, at the end of the month.

The Twinsburg stamping plant has gone from employment of about 1,000 to less than 300, and all will be laid off except for 77 workers who will stay until the end of July. Like the "old" General Motors Co., which also stayed behind after GM went through a quick bankruptcy last summer, the former Chrysler has sold or is attempting to sell many former assembly plants or other smaller manufacturing operations the new, pared-down Chrysler no longer needs. The proceeds are to be allocated to creditors of the former Chrysler.

Thanks to Bill Visnic from, The Auto Observer for contributing this article.