UAW sues GM to block plant closings

The United Auto Workers (UAW) sued General Motors (GM) on Tuesday in an effort to block plant closings in three states, The Associated Press reports.

The lawsuit, filed in Youngstown, Ohio, says the auto manufacturer is forbidden from idling the plants in Ohio, Michigan and Maryland under its current contract with the union.

A spokesperson for GM, however, told The Hill that the plant closures “do not violate the provisions of the UAW-GM National Agreement.”

The spokesperson declined to provide any further comment on the lawsuit.

{mosads}The company announced last November that it was planning to cut 15 percent of its workforce, approximately 15,000 people, by shuttering the factories. The move was met with bipartisan backlash.

“We are now looking at cutting all @GM subsidies, including… for electric cars,” President Trump tweeted at the time, adding that he was “very disappointed.”

“This decision is corporate greed at its worst,” Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) added in a statement.

GM said in November the closings don’t violate the contract with UAW and that the company was working with the union on “solutions to our business challenges.”

GM announced last December that it would be offering factory jobs at other locations for the roughly 2,700 workers at plants scheduled to be shut down.  

The UAW then sued GM in January, accusing them of hiring part-time workers instead of transferring laid-off employees, as they had promised.

–This report was updated at 2:33 p.m.