Good Luck, Lordstowners

PHUTATORIUS
The Washington Post just published this writeup of GM's plant in Lordstown, Ohio, just up the road from where I grew up.

I don't have much to add, except to say that the Mahoning Valley has been taking a beating as long as I've been alive. It doesn't surprise me, then, to read that the union local is working as cooperatively with management as it is (though it was not always this way): after about thirty years of this, the economic realities set in.

Surely you can accuse me of homerism, but I hope the Lordstown plant is saved. They're working with a reasonable union, building cars like the Chevy Cobalt and Cruze. This doesn't sound quite so much like the American auto industry we've been [appropriately] trashing over these past three weeks. If the problems are in Detroit, let the plants in Detroit go down. Where GM has a working partnership with labor to build fuel-efficient cars, it's doing something right. I'd hate to see the good bits triaged out because there's a greater concentration of labor and political clout in That State Up North.

Disclaimer: the Author of this post doesn't give a damn for the whole state of Michigan, as he's from O-hi-o. Make of this what you will.