This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Nov. 3, 2011 - Taking advantage of the coincidence of the 100th birthday of Chevrolet and good news for the General Motors Wentzville plant, Gov. Jay Nixon took the long view Thursday in the celebration of new jobs and a new vehicle coming to the facility.
"This is our time," he told a cheering group that at times seemed more like the crowd at Busch Stadium last week than workers and others gathered on the assembly plant floor. "Today we make history, American history, right here, right now. This is our moment. The future of the American auto industry starts right here, right now."
As speaker after speaker hailed the news that GM would invest $380 million in the plant, create or retain 1,660 jobs and bring production of the mid-size Chevrolet Colorado pickup to Wentzville, the Cardinals' World Series win was brought up more than once.
Like the Redbirds, the Wentzville plant seemed to have its back against the wall, with the loss of its second shift in 2009 and what appeared at times to be a bleak future -- much like the ones that did in the Ford plant in Hazelwood and the Chrysler plants in Fenton.
Now, Cathy Clegg, GM's vice president of labor relations told the crowd, the automaker has turned things around, emerged from bankruptcy and will add a second shift of 400 workers to build the Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana vans, starting in January 2012.
Clegg said no timeline had been determined on when work would begin on the redesigned Colorado pickup. Nor did she know precisely how many of the jobs to be created at the plant would be new ones as opposed to bringing back workers who had been laid off in leaner times.
What she was sure of, she said, was that the new investment and new vehicle would not be coming to Wentzville without cooperation among GM, the United Auto Workers and state and local government officials. Because they could work together, she said, Missouri will share in the more than $5 billion the company has invested or will invest since it emerged from bankruptcy.
Noting that the first Chevrolet vehicle took shape in a rented garage in Detroit in 1911, Clegg concluded:
"What a great way to start our next 100 years."
Besides the money and jobs coming to the plant directly, several speakers pointed out the collateral effect, including an estimated seven more jobs that are created for each jobs on the assembly plant floor. Nixon said that industries that supply the Wentzville plant and other vehicle facilities, located throughout the state, also will benefit.
That kind of spinoff effect was what he had in mind, he said, when on the day he took office, his very first act was to create a task force to look into how Missouri's once-thriving auto industry could be revived and expanded.
He also touted the passage of legislation last year, the Missouri Manufacturing Jobs Act, which will give GM incentives over the next 10 years once its jobs are in place and its meets other requirements for investment and employment.
"We were willing to take the risk that this industry was going to recover," Nixon said. "The vehicles of the future had to be built somewhere. It was up to us to make sure they were built here in the Show-Me State.
"Since taking office, we have worked every day, all 1,024 of them, to be here this day."
That success was far from assured. Wentzville plant manager John Dansby opened the ceremonies by noting that in its dimmest days, "many of the folks here were starting to lose faith. It looked like we were just dangling a carrot in front of everyone," but it would turn out to be nothing but a tease.
Still, he and others, like Mike Bullock, chairman of Local 2250 of the UAW, said the plant kept plugging away, and with the help of Nixon and other government leaders, they made GM see that Wentzville was a good spot to place their bets on the future.
The governor said that given the state's heritage in the auto business, that conclusion is a solid one.
"A generation ago," he said, "a job at an auto plant was not just a job, it was a lifelong career, an opportunity to achieve the American dream."
For Missouri, he said, "it's who we are. It's in our blood."
Now, he said, all the work has paid off.
"We've had a bumpy ride, but it's nothing that won't be smoothed out by a ride in a Chevy Colorado."
In fact, the only bumps in the entire program Thursday came when Clegg of GM said the new vehicle would be built "in the state of Missou-ree -- or as the governor told me to pronounce it, Missou-rah."
That brought knowing laughs from those in the crowd who keep track of which pronunciation the governor uses and are conscious of the fact that he alternates between the two, almost 50-50.
Looking a little embarrassed, Nixon laughed right along and moved his hands in a scale-balancing motion, to show that the urban pronunciation and the rural one get equal weight in the gubernatorial lexicon.
And sure enough, when it was his turn to speak, just when you might think he was stuck in a Missour-ee mode, he would slip back to Missour-ah, then start the rotation all over again.