US: GM to add 4200 jobs in $2b investment

Detroit Free Press - General Motors is planning on Tuesday to announce an investment totaling more than $2 billion and worth about 4,200 jobs in eight states, people familiar with the matter told the Free Press.

CEO Dan Akerson is scheduled to speak Tuesday at GM’s transmission factory in Toledo, Ohio, kicking off the plant updates. In total, GM will update 17 facilities, but may not announce all of them Tuesday. The jobs include as many as 2,000 new hires at the Detroit-Hamtramck plant where GM builds the Chevrolet Volt, with hiring likely to start in late summer.

The Free Press had earlier reported Detroit-Hamtramck would add more workers late this year. Interest in the Volt extended-range electric car has prompted GM to move up the workers’ hire date and possibly triple the plant’s current workforce, which currently numbers about 1,000 people. The plant is expected to stop producing the aged Buick Lucerne and Cadillac CTS sedans this year and is also slated to help build the 2013 Chevrolet Malibu when it debuts early next year.

In Toledo, where Akerson speaks Tuesday, GM plans to invest about $250 million and add at least 250 jobs, and possibly as many as 400, depending on sales levels. Akerson then plans to visit other plants involved in the investment.

The hiring blitz – which includes the Warren Tech Center and powertrain factories in Spring Hill, Tenn., and Tonawanda, N.Y. -- includes a couple hundred white-collar workers. GM will add many of the jobs in 2012, with some hiring to start this year and some jobs possibly to come online in 2013.

GM spokeswoman Kim Carpenter declined to comment.