Workers Walk Out At Gm Truck Plant

Union workers at a General Motors Corp. truck assembly plant went on strike Friday, walking out over staffing, health and safety issues.

UAW Local 2209 President Joe Burkhamer said about 1,200 day shift members walked off the lines at 10 a.m., although he said management shut down the assembly line at some point before the strike deadline.

“We just walked them out,” he said, minutes after the strike began. “They’re out on strike officially.”

Burkhamer said picket lines are being set up, and that about 70 union members will be on the lines for four-hour shifts.

Tom Beaman, a spokesman for GM’s Truck Group in Detroit, said talks had continued right up to the deadline and would resume at 9 a.m. today.

The factory southwest of Fort Wayne employs about 2,700 union members who produce about 25 percent of GM’s full-size C-K series pickups, the automaker’s best-selling vehicles.

Since it is an assembly plant, not a parts plant, the walkout likely would not have any immediate impact on other GM plants in Indiana or other states.