Plant closings, job cuts and model changes at GM

GM executives said they were determined to make the company more cost-effective and more responsive to market shifts.

“We were often complacent, stubborn and even arrogant in our so-called glory years,” GM chairman John F Smith Jr told a group of industry executives and analysts in Michigan on Monday. “Despite all the progress, we are still the high-cost vehicle producer in North America.”

GM will introduce 23 car and truck models in the next three years and will average onenew product introduction every 28 days between now and the middle of the next decade, GM officials said. Some of the models will be totally new, while others will be redesigns of current vehicles.

Still, GM plans to heed the warnings of industry analysts and will cut at least 23–and probably more–models from its lines. It may also consider eliminating entire brands, said Donald R DeVeaux, GM director of North American market analysis, though he declined to name any models.

Smith said GM will build new, leaner assembly plants that will operate around the clock and replace or consolidate old plants that operate at 94 per cent capacity. GM may also move toward modular production at these new plants.

In a statement, Smith also said the number of GM workers will be reduced, with attrition remaining “the major tool”.

DeVeaux said production “should be up to full line by the end of this week”. GM plants are running at higher-than-usual capacity, and the company is using massive overtime labour to getits vehicles out to dealers, he said.

Gender tangle

Neither side will discuss the particulars, but lawyer Kristen Galles settled last week with her former employer, Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy, ending her gender discrimination suit against the firm. The firm has denied discriminating against her, though terms of the deal are a secret because of a confidentiality clause.

Still, some spicy details are part of the public recording at the DC Superior Court, reports The Washington Post. Depositions and affidavits filed in the case crowbarred a window into Powell, Goldstein’s culture, offering an unusual glimpse into the politics of getting ahead at a large corporate firm. The first and most important lesson: Fit in.

Galles apparently didn’t, though how much of the friction between Powell partners and her was a result of her lack of interpersonal skills (their version) or their fuddy-duddy sexism (her version) is imponderable. She alleged in the suit that she was denied the full raisesgiven to her male colleagues and was unfairly dismissed.

What’s not in dispute: She was fired in January 1996 shortly after feuding with a partner about a case.

Top partners, according to Galles, hauled her into an office and announced that she was history. Her primary sins, they allegedly informed Galles, were describing replacement workers in a labour dispute as “scabs” and demonstrating poor judgement in her requests for vacation time. In depositions, firm partners largely confirmed Galles’ account of her exit, while denying that Galles’ gender had anything to do with their unhappiness with her performance.

According to job evaluations, Galles had the intellectual wattage and energy to be a first-rate lawyer. What she apparently lacked was the ability to get along with colleagues. In a 1992 appraisal, lawyer Geri Freeman stated that Galles “does have problems getting along with people in the office. She is too confrontative [sic]”.

There were style issues, too. One lawyer took her aside onceand strongly suggested that she “soften things up” image-wise. Try the “steel magnolia” approach of seeming genteel on the outside, she was told, while remaining tough on the inside. Flatter partners by letting them take credit for your ideas, the lawyer recommended. Galles, however, wasn’t in a go-along-to-get-along mood.

In heaven’s name

Is there a Washington lawyer with a more colourful client list than solo practitioner Lewis Rivlin? Unlikely, especially now that Rivlin is working for Greater Ministries International.

According to Rivlin, the Tampa organisation exists to “spread the word of God and do good things in God’s name”. Authorities in Pennsylvania and Ohio have another opinion. They’ve slapped cease-and-desist orders on the group, and Pennsylvania officials have described it as a Ponzi scheme targeting fundamentalist Christians.

According to Michael Byrne, an attorney who heads the litigation and enforcement wing of Pennsylvania’s state securities agency, the GreaterMinistries pitch works like this: Greater Ministries officials invite donors to contribute a sum of cash, suggesting that their faith will be rewarded in 17 months when the money is doubled and “gifted” back to them. Greater Ministries’ appeals are made in person to small and large groups, typically to members of Christian churches, often in family restaurants and hotels.

The organisation is believed to have collected tens and possible hundreds of millions of dollars. Some “donors” clearly have forked over huge sums. Recently, a 66-year-old Lancaster woman, June Smith, sued the group, alleging that Greater Ministries owes her $400,000. She “gave” a total of $261,500 to the group after she was promised her money back and a 100 per cent gain in 16 months, she says in her suit.

But when she found errors in her monthly account balances, she hopped in her car and, with a friend, drove south to Tampa. A Greater Ministries official there told her she had been “prayed out” of the programme and that heraccounts had been closed.

Rivlin, who maintains that Greater Ministries is upstanding, said he isn’t representing the organisation in any of the litigation against it. Instead, his job is to be helpful in “suggesting some structural improvements in how they’re organised”.