Since I was a kid in the seventies I've been reading about Flint....The strikes, the walk outs, the open hostility...IMO, easily the most UAW supportive town I know in Michigan. Of course the fatman documented his simplistic view of why GM left Flint to decay back in the 80's. They were so entrenched there that even after they closed multiple plants, they still had/have plants there to this day...Buick City was mammoth, the GM presence in Flint was overwhelming...Heck they even had a college there, the General Motors Institute...now operated as Kettering University. How things have devolved......
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100915/AUTO01/9150388
"So far, the situation at Flint North has been the messiest.
The complex is the last vestige of the Buick City manufacturing center that in the 1980s was among the largest automotive production sites in the world. The six plants at Flint North had been phased out by GM in stages.
Ownership of Flint North was ceded to Motors Liquidation in July 2009, although in a special arrangement, GM kept making pistons and other engine parts at one of the factories. The empty plants were essentially abandoned in their as-is condition on their last day of production.
"They still have personal goods on the table," said Swanson of the sheriff's department. "There's still ceiling fans going."
Shortly afterward, thieves began to strip copper -- used in heating, cooling and other systems -- from one of the nearby vacant plants. Authorities said that a ring of thieves hit the building night after night over three months, taking out more than 150,000 pounds of copper.
The gang would load the metal on flatbed railroad cars -- owned and formerly used by GM -- and roll the cars to a hole in a fence, where the copper was transferred to trucks and then sold to scrap dealers.
In March, authorities arrested 11 people and estimated the value of the stolen copper at more than $1 million.
"They were trying to steal every piece of copper that they could," said the Genesee County prosecutor, David S. Leyton."
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100915/AUTO01/9150388
"So far, the situation at Flint North has been the messiest.
The complex is the last vestige of the Buick City manufacturing center that in the 1980s was among the largest automotive production sites in the world. The six plants at Flint North had been phased out by GM in stages.
Ownership of Flint North was ceded to Motors Liquidation in July 2009, although in a special arrangement, GM kept making pistons and other engine parts at one of the factories. The empty plants were essentially abandoned in their as-is condition on their last day of production.
"They still have personal goods on the table," said Swanson of the sheriff's department. "There's still ceiling fans going."
Shortly afterward, thieves began to strip copper -- used in heating, cooling and other systems -- from one of the nearby vacant plants. Authorities said that a ring of thieves hit the building night after night over three months, taking out more than 150,000 pounds of copper.
The gang would load the metal on flatbed railroad cars -- owned and formerly used by GM -- and roll the cars to a hole in a fence, where the copper was transferred to trucks and then sold to scrap dealers.
In March, authorities arrested 11 people and estimated the value of the stolen copper at more than $1 million.
"They were trying to steal every piece of copper that they could," said the Genesee County prosecutor, David S. Leyton."
