Janesville Assembly

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Janesville Assembly is an automobile factory owned by General Motors located in Janesville, Wisconsin. Opened in 1919, it is currently the oldest factory still in use at GM.

[edit] History

The factory was originally built to produce Samson tractors. These failed to find buyers, so GM switched it to producing Chevrolet automobiles in 1923. It has produced General Motors C/K Trucks pickup trucks over the years, but today builds full-size SUVs.^[1]

Production at the factory was halted during the Great Depression for a short time and there was a famous sit-down strike in 1937. Janesville also produced artillery during World War II.^[1]

Janesville is one of three plants producing the GMT900 trucks like the Chevrolet Suburban, and began building the next-generation short-wheelbase GMT900 trucks in January of 2006. It began producing long wheelbase GMT900 trucks in March and an overtime shift was added to meet demand.^{[citation needed]}

Since 1994, the plant has also produced medium-duty trucks for Isuzu under its partnership with GM.^[2]

The plant covers 4,800,000 ft³ (446,000 m³)^{[citation needed]} and employed 3,900 workers in 2005 with a peak of around 7,000 in 1970.^[1]

[edit] 2008

Fuel prices and related slow sales of SUVs have impacted the plant. In April 2008, GM announced that the Janesville plant would cut back full-time production to a single shift. Combined with an ongoing employee buy-out program, the layoffs were expected in July 2008 and to total around 750 jobs.^[3]

During GM's 2008 Annual shareholder meeting on June 3, 2008, CEO Rick Wagoner announced that the Janesville assembly plant would close by 2010 along with three other GM factories. The cutbacks announced along with other changes were expected to save the North American division $1 billion per year starting in 2010. Combined with previous efforts, GM expects to reduce costs by $15 billion a year in its North America operations.^[4]