Pat Dollard

Tweet

PBN:

By Ted Nesi

A NORTON G.M. PARTS CENTER will stay open for an additional six months after U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., asked the bankrupt automaker’s CEO to reconsider his initial decision to close the plant by the end of this year.

NORTON – So much for not interfering with the automakers’ restructuring.

Just days after General Motors Corp. announced that it would close its parts and distribution center in Norton by the end of this year as part of its bankruptcy restructuring, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., has convinced G.M. chief executive Fritz Henderson to keep it open for an additional six months.

The facility’s roughly 80 workers were told on Monday that the plant would close by the end of this year. That led the facility’s United Auto Workers union rep, Mark Ridenour, to ask Frank, whose district includes Norton, to intervene on the workers’ behalf.

Frank met with Henderson – who became G.M.’s CEO after President Barack Obama ordered the firing of his predecessor, Rick Wagoner – and asked him to delay the plant’s closing. Henderson agreed to keep it open through July 2010.

Frank is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the $700 billion bailout fund that the administration is using to finance its share of G.M.’s restructuring costs.

“I greatly appreciate General Motors’ willingness to take into consideration the wider needs of the company and especially the community,” Frank said in a statement. “Keeping the facility open for this extra time gives workers a chance to look at other opportunities, while at the same time continuing to provide for their families. I am hopeful that the economy will improve over the next year, and will provide better prospects for GM and its employees.”

The conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal took Frank to task for his intervention in today’s edition, saying it represented “the problem with industrial policy and government control of American business. In Washington, every Member of Congress now thinks he’s a czar who can call ol’ Fritz and tell him how to make cars.”