GM names Doneen McDowell new direct labor negotiator
Typical Motors has named a new UAW labor negotiator as longtime labor manager Scott Sandefur moves to a new job.
Doneen McDowell, 50, changed Sandefur, 58, as vice president of Basic Motors North America Labor Relations powerful Monday.
McDowell is currently the executive director for manufacturing SUV and Auto Group. Sandefur will choose above a new part as vice president of Manufacturing Workforce Strategy until he retires.
McDowell is the fourth female to lead GM labor relations. Diana Tremblay was one of the most noteworthy current girls to do so from 2006 by 2009. She negotiated the historic 2007 agreement that created the VEBA, which is a UAW managed hourly retiree health and fitness treatment fund.
UAW’s leading GM negotiator, Terry Dittes, reported Sandefur was a man of “integrity.”
“We want to want Scott Sandefur the greatest of luck in his new purpose and his retirement in 2021,” Dittes, vice president and director of the UAW’s Basic Motors Department, said in a assertion. “Scott is a person of integrity and credibility. We observed problems involving GM and the UAW otherwise quite a few periods while performing with each other. During people time of disagreements, he did not compromise his values or trustworthiness while carrying out his responsibilities.”
McDowell started doing work as an EDS agreement industrial engineer at Lordstown Assembly Plant in 1993. 4 many years afterwards, she joined GM in the Metallic Fabrication Division Industrial Engineering Team, GM reported in a statement. More than the upcoming 20 many years, she labored in a number of factories in several functions which include supply chain and engineering and operations. She’s held leadership work in assembly, stamping and propulsion.
“Doneen’s passion for personnel engagement, her commitment to our GM behaviors, as properly as her frequent travel to deliver organization results will position her properly to guide the Labor Relations crew as we help completely transform and prepare for GM’s all-electric potential,” stated Phil Kienle, GM North America vice president of Production and Labor Relations.
Sandefur joined GM in 1986 and he has held many manufacturing, labor relations and human assets positions with escalating responsibility about the several years in various GM operations. Those include Packard Electric powered, Saginaw Metal Castings and Arlington Assembly in Texas wherever GM tends to make its full-sized SUVs.
“Scott has been instrumental in the accomplishment of a dozen countrywide negotiations and various regional and particular negotiations with GM’s a lot of unions,” Kienle claimed.
In the fall of 2019, some 48,000 UAW members went on a 40-working day strike versus GM, in component in excess of the automaker’s decision to shut four crops in the United States. Dittes sat throughout from Sandefur when the two negotiated to save Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly, now termed Manufacturing unit ZERO, from closure. GM is investing $2.2 billion to retool that plant to make all-electric motor vehicles starting with the 2022 GMC Hummer EV pickup later on this 12 months.
In his new part, Sandefur will get the job done on a way to boost the contributions of human relations and labor professionals in the crops. He will also head tasks, this kind of as the We Are GM practical experience. That is an internal method aimed to instruct GM workforce about the company’s business strategy and extended-phrase targets.
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(This story has been modified to explain that McDowell is the fourth female to direct GM’s labor negotiations.)
Contact Jamie L. LaReau at 313-222-2149 or [email protected]. Abide by her on Twitter @jlareauan. Go through a lot more on Normal Motors and sign up for our autos publication. Develop into a subscriber.