LINDEN: The General Motors assembly plant, the last vehicle assembly plant in New Jersey, will cease production early next year.
At 10 a.m. yesterday, hourly employees were told that sometime between February and June production of the GMC Jimmy and the Chevrolet Blazer will end.
The layoffs will affect between 900 and 950 hourly employees, and 110 salaried employees.
A contract with the United Auto Workers requires the plant to remain open until 2007, even if no products are being assembled. About 700 hourly employees will remain on the payroll.
"GM, like any other company, is driven by the marketplace and we're faced with the fact that there really isn't a market . . . anymore (for the products assembled in Linden)," said company spokesman Dan Flores.
"They just confirmed what a lot of us knew was going to happen," said an Edison woman, who has worked at the plant for 27 years.
"The union has been fighting for another product -- our plant has always met every production goal -- but there's no product for us," said the woman, who asked that her name not be used.
U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., called the closure prior to 2007 "a breach of faith with its workers and the community. GM owes its workers and the community an explanation for breaking its promise, suspending production and idling its employees two years ahead of schedule.
"This latest blow to New Jersey's manufacturing industry brings into focus the serious attention we must pay to modernizing our economy and its work force and focusing on the critical economic-development challenges we face going forward," Corzine added.
Yesterday's announcement came 10 months after the Ford assembly plant in Edison was shut down for good, leaving only the Linden plant assemblying vehicles in the state.
GM recently announced it was closing its assembly plant in Baltimore, ending production there of the Chevrolet Astro and GMC Safari.
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