GM to Shut Plant; Report Comes as Labor Talks Near

DETROIT —  Only a month and a half before it opens nationwide contract talks with the United Auto Workers, General Motors turned up the pressure on the union Friday when it announced that it plans to close yet another plant--this time a parts operation in Michigan.

GM said that its Inland division will shutter its Tecumseh, Mich., trim plant, which makes seat covers for GM cars, sometime in 1988. Inland said that it hopes to keep most of the seat cover production in-house and shift much of the work to plants in Euclid, Ohio, and Grand Rapids, Mich.

A company spokesman said many of the Tecumseh plant’s 900 employees, including 740 union workers, may be able to transfer to those facilities.

Meanwhile, Inland said it also plans to move additional seat cover production out of its Livonia, Mich., parts plant, but a spokesman said the division had not yet determined how many workers would lose their jobs as a result.

The Tecumseh closing is just the latest in a long string of plant shutdowns that have been announced by GM since late last year. The world’s largest auto maker, struggling with poor sales and a declining market share, has been moving to reduce its production capacity in order to improve its profit margins.

Still, GM’s decision to announce another shutdown just before its crucial labor talks begin came as something of a surprise. Just last week, GM Chairman Roger B. Smith insisted at the firm’s annual meeting that he knew of no plant closings scheduled to be announced prior to the start of bargaining with the UAW in mid-July.

Review Under Way

GM has acknowledged, however, that it is in the midst of a comprehensive review of its parts plant operations, and officials have said that an announcement of a new wave of shutdowns--similar to last November’s announcement of 11 closings affecting 29,000 workers--could come soon. Still, GM officials denied Friday that the Tecumseh closing would be followed quickly by more.

“This was an Inland announcement,” and was not part of a corporate-wide closing schedule, said Jim Hagedon, a spokesman for Inland.