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Plant schedule has five weeks of downtime through Nov. 3

JANESVILLE — General Motors made official Monday what’s been speculated in Janesville for weeks.

Sort of.

GM previously said the Janesville plant would have 10 weeks of production downtime through the end of 2008, but on Monday the automaker released its production schedule only through the week of Nov. 3.

Production and maintenance employees in Janesville will be laid off the weeks of Aug. 18, Aug. 25, Sept. 1, Sept. 29 and Nov. 3.

The layoffs in Janesville are part of an announcement GM made earlier this month to trim truck production by 300,000 units annually by the end of 2009. The automaker is trying to adjust to a weak U.S. economy and the shift in consumer purchases from trucks to cars and crossovers.

Based on earlier schedules provided to local GM suppliers, speculation surfaced that the Janesville plant would be shut down for all of November and December.

While GM has not yet released its official production schedule for those months, the math suggests that the speculation could be right.

Five weeks of downtime through the week of Nov. 3 would leave the automaker with five more weeks of non-production for the remainder of the year.

Workers already are scheduled to be off for holiday the weeks of Nov. 24 (Thanksgiving) and Dec. 22 (Christmas) and Dec. 29 (New Year’s).

The five remaining weeks in November and December that could be dedicated to production are the weeks of Nov. 10, Nov. 17, Dec. 1, Dec. 8 and Dec. 15.

It’s uncertain when, or if, GM will designate those five weeks for downtime.

In a memo to employees Monday, a plant official said the plan is a projection and subject to change.

“Whenever we do this, it’s always contingent on the market, which ebbs and flows,” said GM spokesman Chris Lee. “We’re formally putting out these weeks and not going any further right now because we’re just not sure.

“If you do the math, it could very well be the rest of the year, but right now nobody knows. We’ve confirmed these five weeks, and employees know there’s a potential for five more.”

Between 1,150 and 1,200 hourly workers returned to the plant Monday to build SUVs on one shift. The workers were off for a two-week corporate shutdown in early July, followed by a two-week shutdown because of slow SUV sales.

Earlier this year, GM announced that it would cut second-shift production in Janesville. It later said it plans to end all production in Janesville by 2010 at the latest. The closure of the Janesville plant has since been accelerated, although GM officials have not released a timeline.

There’s been some speculation that a production shutdown in November and December would give GM the 60-day window it needs to notify the state that it plans to close the Janesville plant in early January 2009.

Production plans also have changed for the plant’s Isuzu line, which employs about 50 people. That line had been scheduled for six weeks of downtime, but that has been changed to four weeks.

Those workers will be off this week and next week, as well as the weeks of Aug. 25 and Sept. 22. They will now work the weeks of Oct. 20 and Oct. 27, which previously had been scheduled for downtime.