UAW president calls Ryan comments on GM plant 'ludicrous'

Washington - United Auto Workers President Bob King blasted the comments of GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, who suggested that the Obama administration was to blame for closing an auto plant in 2008 - before he took office.

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, chairman of the House Budget Committee, suggested Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention that President Obama was to blame for General Motors closing its Janesville assembly plant in December 2008.

"A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: 'I believe that if our government is there to support you ? this plant will be here for another hundred years.' That's what he said in 2008," Ryan told delegates Wednesday night in Tampa. "Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year.It is locked up and empty to this day.And that's how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight."

King called Ryan's comments "so ludicrous - you know the facts"

King noted that the plant closed when President George W. Bush was in office in 2008.

During last year's labor talks "we actually put Janesville on the idle list so if GM's market share goes back up, the market improves, the plant could reopen. If it wasn't for collective bargaining, there wouldn't even be that chance."

GM announced in June 2008 that it was closing the Janesville plant, citing slow demand for SUVs and high gas prices. GM shuttered the plant in December 2008 - while Bush was still in office.

Ryan - who represents Janesville in Congress -- wrote a letter to then GM CEO Rick Wagoner in June 2008 with the state's two U.S. senators asking GM to reconsider the decision. "Rather than closing the Janesville plant, a retooled Janesville plant can assist in GM's efforts to adapt to a changing marketing" Ryan and his colleagues wrote in a letter posted on his website.

King cited Republican opposition to the $85 billion auto bailout and noted that if Obama hadn't agreed to provide assistance and save GM, all of the Detroit automaker's plants would have closed.

GM has 43 U.S. plants total, including 12 assembly plants.

King, who's a strong supporter of Obama's and a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, said Ryan's speech was not accurate. "It was not factual. It was a lot of misrepresentation."

King cited Ryan's budget plan that he feels would cut social services to many poor people and give additional tax credits to wealthy Americans.

"I join all of the faith community, all of the faith leaders in saying that the Ryan-Romney budget is anti-Christian, anti-moral," King said. "It's just so wrong. (Ryan) is the guy leading the charge to really harm the most vulnerable."

Romney has fiercely criticized the UAW and labor unions in general. He has argued that the Obama administration gave special treatment to union workers during the bailout, while treating creditors less generously.

Ryan also lobbied the Obama administration in May 2009 to provide billions of dollars in loans to Chrysler Group LLC to try to save the company's Kenosha engine plant using the $25 billion Energy Department retooling loan program. "We strongly encourage you to work with Chrysler to use this available funding to retool the Kenosha engine plant in order to produce the fuel efficient 'Phoenix' line of engines," Ryan and three Wisconsin colleagues wrote in a May 2009 letter to auto czar Steve Rattner.

Chrysler announced in May 2009 as part of its bankruptcy restructuring it would close the Kenosha plant. The plant closed in October 2010, with about 600 workers losing their jobs.

The facility - once part of American Motors run by Mitt Romney's father, George - had 14,000 workers at its peak.

On Wednesday night, Ryan didn't repeat an inaccurate claim he made in a campaign stop earlier this month that Obama "broke his promise" by failing to keep the plant open.

"I remember President Obama visiting it when he was first running, saying he'll keep that plant open," Ryan said at a campaign stop in Ohio this month. "One more broken promise. We used to build Tahoes and Suburbans. One of the reasons that plant got shut down was $4 gasoline. You see, this costs jobs. The president's terrible energy policies are costing us jobs."

In fact, Obama made no such promise and the plant halted production in December 2008, when President George W. Bush was in office.

GM cited the low demand for SUVs and high gas prices during the Bush administration as the reason for closing the plant, but Obama hadn't taken office.

Obama did speak at the plant in February 2008, and suggested that a government partnership with automakers could keep the plant open, but made no promises as Ryan suggested.

The Janesville plant, which once employed about 7,000 and had 2,400 workers when GM announced it would close, remains on standby. The plant opened in 1919.

In 2009, a few dozen workers continued after the last SUV rolled off the line at Janesville to make pickup trucks for Isuzu on a contract basis.

In June 2009, GM considered three sites to locate a small car: its Orion plant in Michigan; Janesville, Wis.; and a Spring Hill, Tenn., plant slated to close in November. GM picked Orion and later reopened Spring Hill.

Ryan broke with his running mate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, by voting for a government bailout of GM and Chrysler LLC in December 2008 without a requirement that the automakers file for bankruptcy first, as Romney had insisted.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted that Ryan's southern Wisconsin district lost four auto sector plants - including two Delphi Corp. plants between 2008 and 2010.

dshepardson@detnews.com

(202) 662-8735

Source: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120830/AUTO01/208300452/1374/rss44

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