7867–8010 Van Nuys Blvd., Panorama City 91402 (between Lanark St. and Blythe St.)
The General Motors (GM) plant formerly at this address was the last auto plant to leave Southern California during the region’s painful process of deindustrialization.
During the 1980s it was the site of a major struggle, led by a multiracial group of United Auto Workers (UAW), to keep the plant open. GM wanted to close the plant and shift production to Canada, where it could save on health care costs. The workers argued that Canada’s lower production costs were not sufficient reason for the company to leave. They stressed that corporations have a responsibility to their workers and to local communities, especially when the factories have been located there for many years. As part of their efforts to bring Latina/o, African American, and white workers together, as well as to build support in the larger community, UAW organizers connected with the progressive political leadership of the time, including such figures as Jesse Jackson, Cesar Chavez, and Maxine Waters. By waging an extensive campaign, including a boycott, activists managed to get GM to stay ten years longer than anticipated. Although GM did eventually leave, the organizing work of the campaign later formed the basis of the Labor/Community Strategy Center. The center has developed such projects as the Bus Riders Union, which has organized for transit equity in Los Angeles since the early 1990s.
After the plant was closed, the lot sat barren and rusting for a few years until a redevelopment project was initiated. In a nod to the site’s previous function, the new shopping center built there was called “The Plant.” Although California was once the largest producer of autos and auto-related parts west of the Mississippi, at the time of this writing the state’s last remaining auto plant (Toyota in Fremont) had just closed, leaving no auto plants in California. GM Van Nuys’ transition from an auto plant to a shopping center signals the regional economy’s shift away from durable manufactured goods to services and retail—a change that, for workers, involves an equally important shift from high-quality, middle-class jobs with benefits to low-wage, insecure jobs with minimal benefits (like most of those in The Plant’s retail stores).
Images:
- After the demolition of GM Van Nuys in 1998, the site was converted into a shopping center called ‘The Plant,’ 2008. Photo by Wendy Cheng.
- United Auto Workers Local 645 President Pete Beltran, Cesar Chavez, and Maxine Waters (from left) march with a multiracial group of GM workers past the GM plant, 1983. Photo by Mike Sergieff. Courtesy of Herald Examiner Collection / Los Angeles Public Library.