Workers Tell Labor Sec. Their Concerns

YPSILANTI, Mich. - As the bankruptcy process moves forward, President Barack Obama is reaching out to Michigan communities crushed by the auto crisis. Tuesday, his labor secretary was in town with millions of more dollars to help our state, but it was little consolation to those still reeling from the plant closures announced Monday.

Workers from the Willow Run Transmission Plant gathered at Eastern Michigan University where U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis met with politicians, professors, workers and students to talk about re-training and a green economy. Instead, she got an earful over Willow Run.

"I know the meaning of pain and to look in my members' faces yesterday, I feel that pain," said Don Skidmore, president of UAW Local 735.

"I'm very moved by what I've heard, by the stories so eloquently presented," Solis said. She was in town to announce $43-million in federal assistance for worker re-training in Michigan. While the state will be asking for additional emergency grants to help with that, most here wanted to talk about the injustice of the Willow Run plant closing down and a loss of more than 1,000 jobs, especially when the facility builds transmissions more efficiently and with less expense.

"We will be having other questions, which we will ask, and I think that the conclusion of this will be that GM will have real cause to rethink the closure," said Congressman John Dingell.