General Motors' Lordstown manufacturing facility was among the 16 U.S. plants guaranteed work under contract terms negotiated between the automaker and union earlier this week. "It's a fantastic contract," Dave Green, president of Local 1714 in Lordstown, Ohio told the Chicago Tribune. "It looks like some new work is coming to Lordstown."

Indeed, Lordstown is promised new vehicles after production of the current Chevrolet Cobalt and Pontiac G5 ends in 2010, but the impact of the new contract will reach far beyond the walls of the Lordstown facility. It will have a huge impact on GM's ability to build quality cars and trunks in the United States that are more cost competitive with import models.

"This is a revolutionary contract," Michael Robinet, vice president at industry forecaster CSM Worldwide, told the Detroit Free Press. "This is not adding on to the same old contract." The new deal helps to create "a much more efficient GM," he said. For instance, it will now be more economically feasible for GM to build cars in the U.S. for other markets around the world. Balancing global production demands will reportedly be easier with the new contract. "If you're building a Saturn Astra here," Robinet added, "why not build a few Opel Astras and ship them back to Europe?"

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Source: Chicago Tribune