Autoworkers feel the pain of SUV, truck decline

By Nick Carey

GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan (Reuters) - The end of America's decade-long love affair with the sports utility vehicle means Marco Sermeno will lose his job, again.

Sermeno, a die-maker, is one of 1,340 hourly workers at a General Motors Corp stamping plant in this Western Michigan city that the No. 1 U.S. automaker recently said it will close at the end of 2009.

"The closure announcement was devastating," Sermeno said.

About 40 percent of production at this Grand Rapids facility supplies GM's full-size pickup trucks and SUVs.

For a 17-year GM veteran like Sermeno, the closure is a depressingly familiar story.

"This will be my third plant closing," he said. "If I can find a job at a different GM plant, I'll have to move."

Sermeno has children about 100 miles away where he used to work in Flint -- once the heart of GM's automotive empire, with more than 100,000 hourly workers at its peak, more than its total 64,000 hourly workers today. Unfortunately for Sermeno, his best chance of a new job with GM is in Ohio.

"I haven't got any choice, I have to work," he said. "But it means I'll be even further away from my family."

Compounding the uncertainty over the jobs picture is the news over the past week that GM is in talks to acquire Chrysler, the No. 3 U.S. automaker.

A merger, analysts say, would almost certainly mean more GM plant shutdowns, tens of thousands of more job losses and more upheaval for people like Sermeno in Michigan and elsewhere.

On a recent day outside the Grand Rapids plant where some have worked for decades -- as did their parents or grandparents -- workers were sad but resigned to their fate.

For some the closure means moving on to work in another GM plant. If, that is, they can find an available spot in the automaker's dwindling roster of facilities.

"GM is not going to be able to absorb all these people," said Daniel Smigel, who has worked here for 30 years.

Smigel's grandfather and father also worked here.

"There's always been one of us working here, sometimes two. I'm lucky. With 30 years I'm close enough to retirement and I'm just hoping GM gives us a good (layoff) package," he added. "It's the younger workers I feel sorry for."