GM to have no workers on layoff by Sept: UAW

General Motors Co is calling back about 2,000 workers and will be at full employment this fall, said United Auto Workers vice president and head of GM union members Joe Ashton.

"Those people will all be back at work in September," Ashton told union members at a three-day conference on union strategy as the UAW heads into negotiations with major US automakers.

"We will have full employment in September for the first time in a long time," said Ashton.

Ashton did not offer details on where the returning employees will work.

The current UAW contract with the three automakers expires on September 14.

Ashton said a priority for the UAW in negotiations with GM will be product commitments at closed plants in Janesville, Wisconsin and Spring Hill, Tennessee and for the Shreveport, Louisiana plant, which is scheduled to close in 2012.

The Shreveport plant is idled temporarily due to a shortage of auto parts due to the Japan earthquake to build pickup trucks Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon.

GM made cars for the Saturn brand at the Spring Hill plant, which was one of four brands that it either sold or shut as it went through a US-government sponsored bankruptcy in 2009.

Once GM succeeds in returning all laid off UAW members, it will be able to hire new workers at existing plants at the "second tier" wage of about USD 15 per hour.

The two pay levels for UAW members working at the same plants often doing the same jobs was one of the major concessions to US automakers in the last contract reached in 2007.

Now, with the three major automakers with UAW workers -- GM, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler -- on healthier financial footing, the two-tier pay system is expected to be one of the most hotly contested issues within the UAW ahead of the negotiations.

Chrysler is now under management control of Italy's Fiat SpA.