Gm Plant

Four years after the bulldozers swept away much of Poletown, the furious residents are long gone, the prayer vigils and the protests are over and the Cadillac, Buick and Oldsmobile luxury cars are finally starting to roll off the assembly line.

General Motors Corp. indefinitely furloughed 16,700 workers in three states starting today and said it may have to shut down all of its North American assembly operations because of a strike at a parts plant in Indiana. Talks to end the strike at the Delco Electronics plant in Kokomo resumed today. The 7,700 Delco workers have been on strike since Monday. Delco is a GM subsidiary that makes electronic parts such as radios, heat sensors and on-board computer components.

In 1945, when the San Fernando Valley was still largely populated by citrus groves, General Motors purchased land from the Panorama Ranch Co., to serve as the future home for a major auto production plant. That move, and similar actions by some of the biggest names in manufacturing, helped create a Valley region that would eventually be defined by the products it produced--cars, warplanes, even beer. On Dec.

The only people still working at the old General Motors plant here these days are the ones running earthmovers, bulldozers and cranes to scrape away rubble. In August 1992, GM closed the 45-year-old assembly plant, idling 2,600 workers, and shifted production of its Pontiac Firebirds and Chevy Camaros to its newer plant in Ste. Therese, Canada, a suburb of Montreal.

A strike Monday by a United Auto Workers union local at the General Motors Corp. plant in Fairfax, Kan., could endanger production of the popular Chevrolet Malibu sedan, adding to mounting problems for the automaker. Employees at the plant set up pickets in medians and at the gates and vowed to stay out for as long as necessary to get a contract.

In their first televised debate, Los Angeles City Council contenders Lyle Hall and Richard Alarcon argued Friday over who has better public-service credentials but agreed that the largely Latino district they are running in shouldn't necessarily be represented by a Latino.

The United Auto Workers increased pressure Thursday on General Motors Corp. when a Flint parts plant went on strike, raising the prospect that GM's entire North American production could be halted by next week. The strike at the Delphi Flint East complex is the second by a UAW local against GM in the last week. On June 5, workers at a Flint stamping plant walked out in a dispute over work rules, factory conditions and job security.

Led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, hundreds of union workers gathered at a "rally for jobs" Saturday in Van Nuys and marched on a General Motors plant set to close this year. The throng of sign-carrying and flag-waving workers from a range of local unions billed themselves as the "Coalition for Jobs and Health Care" and demonstrated to call attention to rising unemployment and shrinking benefits they said have been caused by corporate greed and mismanagement in the White House.

Despite offers by the city of Los Angeles to broker the sale of the vacant General Motors plant in Panorama City, efforts to find a buyer for the 100-acre plant to help spur economic renewal continue to falter, officials said Wednesday. High-level city officials have floated offers to buy the GM plant so the city can use its financial backing and tax breaks to make the facility more affordable to a new buyers.

A deal to sell the abandoned Van Nuys General Motors plant, shut down for nearly three years, is expected to be consummated this month, possibly as early as next week, sources familiar with the negotiations said Monday. GM executives are said to be in discussion both at the company's home base in Detroit and in Los Angeles with four potential buyers for the 100-acre site, once listed at $50 million but now being offered for $30 million.