Assembly Line

Negotiators for the General Motors Corp.'s minivan plant in Southeast Baltimore and representatives of the United Auto Workers Union are scheduled to return to the bargaining table this morning in hopes of ending a walkout affecting about 3,200 GM assembly-line workers and many other factory employees around the state who make products used to build the vehicles.At 10 a.m. yesterday, a union official blew a whistle, marking the deadline for a settlement of a dispute primarily over safety at the Broening Highway plant.

Leonard A. Skovira, who established three area dry-cleaning establishments and was also an inventor, died May 13 of cancer at his Parkville home. He was 94. Mr. Skovira was born and raised in Jessup, Pa., where he graduated in 1936 from Jessup High School. After high school, he served in the Pennsylvania National Guard and the merchant marine and then took a job in New York City working at Child's Restaurants, first as a busboy and then as a waiter and bartender. With the outbreak of World War II, Mr. Skovira moved to Baltimore and went to work on the assembly line of the old Glenn L. Martin Co. plant in Middle River, building Martin B-26 Marauder bombers.

Anna F. Benick, a former assembly line worker and baker, died of heart failure Wednesday at Chesapeake Hospice House in Linthicum. She was 83. Born Anna Frances Kociolek and raised in Shenandoah, Pa., she moved to Baltimore in 1941. A longtime Brooklyn resident who had been living in Arnold since 2001, she had been employed for more than 20 years as an assembly line worker at Roper Industries in Columbia, manufacturers of window shades and blinds. She retired in 1985. She was married in 1941 to Alfred A. Benick Sr., a federal government worker who died in 1998.

Workers peered through safety goggles as they fitted together parts of the electric motors they were building on a General Motors assembly line in White Marsh. For now, the parts are made in a factory in Mexico and then shipped to Baltimore County for assembly. But not for long. By the end of the year, motors for cutting-edge electric vehicles will be built from scratch in a sprawling $244 million plant under construction next to GM's factory, now called General Motors Baltimore Operations.

Richard A. Johnson Sr., a retired General Motors Corp. assembly line worker who collected automobiles, died of cancer Sept. 10 at his East Oliver Street home. He was 58. Mr. Johnson was born and raised in Baltimore and graduated in 1965 from Douglass High School. He went to work at GM's Broening Highway plant that year, and was an assembly line worker until retiring in 1990. Mr. Johnson enjoyed collecting and driving BMW and Jaguar autos, said a daughter, Terri Johnson of Baltimore. He also was an accomplished carpenter, and liked fishing and going to flea markets.

Lorraine Redd Evans, who spent 30 years working on the assembly line at the former General Electric plant in Columbia, died of cancer Tuesday at Maryland General Hospital. She was 79 and lived in West Baltimore. Lorraine Redd was born in Baltimore, where she attended public school. She married B.J. Williams of Baltimore at age 16 before he left for military service during World War II. "In those days, young girls would marry servicemen not knowing whether they'd come back," said her sister Ersell Pryor of Baltimore.

Victor Joseph Picchio, a World War II veteran and retired General Motors assembly line foreman, died Saturday of heart disease at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore. He was 83. A resident of Owings Mills for 21 years, he was born in Scranton, Pa., and raised in Olyphant, Pa., graduating from public schools there. After high school, he worked for Hudson Coal Co. as a truck driver and laborer and was a volunteer fireman in Olyphant. Mr. Picchio was introduced to Grace M. DePietro by mutual friends at a church dance; they married in 1942.

Newport, Del. - For 25 years John Lewis has welded, painted and assembled cars at the vast General Motors plant in this town outside Wilmington. This month he's doing none of that. The factory is idle until Dec. 1 because of weak demand for its sporty Pontiac and Saturn roadsters, and its future seems iffy at best. Now he's counting on Congress to approve a $25 billion rescue package for the Big Three automakers - help that once-mighty GM says it needs to ensure survival, help that Lewis says is vital to saving his job and millions of others tied to the nation's auto industry.

WHITE MARSH -- Both General Motors Corp. and its workers saw the minting of the Allison Transmission plant's first hybrid transmission yesterday as much more than just a new product. It is a lifeline for both. The nation's largest automaker is producing the industry's first hybrid transmission for light trucks here in a bid to regain market share from foreign competitors such as Toyota Motor Corp. If it is a success, GM plans to expand the product line, which could mean new jobs at the plant.

They had known the end was coming, but suddenly it's a lot closer for Allan Parker and 250 fellow Cecil County residents who work at the Chrysler SUV plant in Newark, Del. Instead of shutting down the plant in late 2009 as scheduled, the reeling company announced last month that it will turn out the lights Dec. 17. "A real nice Christmas present," said Parker, 53, who started at the plant 28 years ago and lives in North East. "I can't imagine the timing being any worse." With the U.S. auto industry on its back, thousands of autoworkers across the country face losing their high-paying jobs in a grim economy.

Some 300 volunteers converged Friday morning on the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Jewish Community Center in Park Heights, where a couple of rooms thumped like a disco and looked like a strange combination of package assembly line, craft workshop and youth basketball practice. The noise and frenetic activity has become a seasonal custom for the Jewish Volunteer Connection, as it commands troops of people at the city center, another in Owings Mills and other locations around the area.

Carolyn Taylor, a retired General Motors worker, died of an apparent heart attack Saturday at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. She was 69 and lived in Northeast Baltimore. Born Carolyn Daveta Pitts in Baltimore and raised in East Baltimore, she was a 1961 graduate of Dunbar High School, where she was class salutatorian. She attended the old Baltimore City Community College and studied nursing. She worked as a home caregiver after high school. She then worked at the old Western Electric Co.'s Point Breeze Works.

T he most successful reality TV shows are those that connect to larger societal trends. As more and more Americans started to focus on healthy eating, along came NBC's "The Biggest Loser." As the concept of globalization took hold of American thinking, " The Amazing Race," with its international treks and challenges, took off on CBS. But of all the many reality series that have come and gone since the debut of "Survivor" on CBS in 2000, I cannot remember one that did a more efficient job of trying to plug itself into the culture than "Undercover Boss," the new CBS show that premieres tonight after the Super Bowl to what will surely be an audience of tens of millions of viewers.

Newport, Del. - For 25 years John Lewis has welded, painted and assembled cars at the vast General Motors plant in this town outside Wilmington. This month he's doing none of that. The factory is idle until Dec. 1 because of weak demand for its sporty Pontiac and Saturn roadsters, and its future seems iffy at best. Now he's counting on Congress to approve a $25 billion rescue package for the Big Three automakers - help that once-mighty GM says it needs to ensure survival, help that Lewis says is vital to saving his job and millions of others tied to the nation's auto industry.

They had known the end was coming, but suddenly it's a lot closer for Allan Parker and 250 fellow Cecil County residents who work at the Chrysler SUV plant in Newark, Del. Instead of shutting down the plant in late 2009 as scheduled, the reeling company announced last month that it will turn out the lights Dec. 17. "A real nice Christmas present," said Parker, 53, who started at the plant 28 years ago and lives in North East. "I can't imagine the timing being any worse." With the U.S. auto industry on its back, thousands of autoworkers across the country face losing their high-paying jobs in a grim economy.

WHITE MARSH -- Both General Motors Corp. and its workers saw the minting of the Allison Transmission plant's first hybrid transmission yesterday as much more than just a new product. It is a lifeline for both. The nation's largest automaker is producing the industry's first hybrid transmission for light trucks here in a bid to regain market share from foreign competitors such as Toyota Motor Corp. If it is a success, GM plans to expand the product line, which could mean new jobs at the plant.

NEWTON, Iowa -- Soon the only items coming out of Newton bearing the Maytag name will be the blue cheese made famous at the farms created by the appliance giant's founding family. Before October ends, the final few hundred washer-dryer assembly workers at the immense Plant 2 at Maytag Corp.'s world headquarters will clock out and get their last paychecks, shuttering an operation that had employed as many as 2,600 workers five years ago. It will be one more step in the $2.6 billion acquisition and consolidation begun last year by rival appliance-maker Whirlpool Corp.