Nine months later, Dayton is still here and so is GM through its Duramax truck engine plant off Dryden Road.
GM co-owns the 584,000-square-foot DMAX plant, as it’s known, with Japanese truckmaker Isuzu. GM, which owns 60 percent of the 10-year-old plant, is investing about $70 million in an engine built there that will meet federal air pollution requirements without sacrificing torque, power or quietness.
The investment has helped quell concerns about the plant’s future. In June, shortly after GM filed for bankruptcy protection, there was uncertainty about whether DMAX would be part of the new, post-bankruptcy GM.
“Until an official announcement was made, things were so volatile that nobody had confidence, and we really didn’t know what was going on,” said DMAX President and CEO Maho Mitsuya.
But the automaker quietly assured the plant’s 550 workers that they and the plant would be part of the “new” GM. While workers consider themselves DMAX employees, they are acutely aware of their ties to GM.
“For us, we’re DMAX,” said Kaine Goodwin, business agent with the union representing DMAX workers, IUE-CWA Local 755, and a former DMAX worker himself. “But we’re still owned by GM. We’ll live and die with GM.”
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