Slaughter praises hiring, work at GM

Seven years ago, when the American automotive industry was on shakier ground, there was a growing sentiment among Rochester's General Motors workers that their jobs would soon fizzle away.

However, GM and the other major car companies are hiring again, and there's evidence of that in Rochester, Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-Fairport said Wednesday.

Slaughter toured a GM parts plant Wednesday, a plant where workers make fuel injector systems and emissions parts for GM trucks like the Silverado. Their parts also go into GMC Sierra pickup trucks and the Chevrolet Tahoe, Suburban, GMC Yukon, Yukon Denali and Cadillac Escalade SUVs. After her 10-minute tour of the production floor, Slaughter praised the plant for hiring hundreds of local workers, not polluting the local environment and making new products that keep GM profitable.

"We've spent the last three weeks talking about the new businesses coming into Rochester and it really behooves us to pay close attention to the wonderful companies that are here," Slaughter said.

Neal Evans, the plant manager, said his facility employs just under 1,100 who pump out parts 24 hours a day. Evans said today's large work force is a result of the plant being awarded the task of making the fuel injectors in 2007. He said 80 percent of his hourly workers have less than 10 years experience, hinting at how new they are to the plant.

The 2007 deal for fuel injectors came "and that really helped save the plant and we've built off of that," Evans said.

Slaughter also praised the plant because it's a landfill free facility, meaning the workers either re-use or recycle all the waste produced.

What's happening at the Lexington Avenue plant is in sharp contrast to what it faced a decade ago. Back then, Delphi Corp. owned the plant and that company went bankrupt and closed most of its U.S. plants. The plant managed to stay open long enough for GM to buy it in 2009 and then GM went bankrupt. The plant, which once employed 6,000 in the 1970s, had slightly more than 800 people in 2012.

Slaughter summed up the plant's wild ride in one comment.

"We've been through good times here and we've been through bad times here, but in the past three years General Motors has made about $165 million in investments in this plant because we have the highest skilled labor force in the country and what is done here is done well," Slaughter said.

Evans said of that $165 million, about $100 million was spent locally on machines for the robotics in the plant. Another chunk of the money was spent on hiring hourly workers as well as local mechanical, control and industrial engineers. The hourly workers run maintenance, fix problems and clean the robotics while another crew tests the fuel injectors using helium to make sure there are no holes or leaks.

Evans said about 35 percent of salaried workers are Rochester Institute of Technology-educated. Another chunk comes from a mixture of the University of Buffalo, Syracuse University and Clarkson University.

Ryan Bergmann is a GM team leader with nine years at the Rochester plant. He leads a group of workers who are in charge of testing the fuel injector parts.

Bergmann said the plant's influx of workers gave him and his colleagues a sigh of relief.

"It's great," he said. "It gives us a sense of security. It helped with overall morale because there was a panic about our manufacturing job. These are solid, middle-class jobs."