BALTIMORE - Robert Fitch, a 60-year-old sanitation worker for General Motors, will lose his job today when the company closes its van factory near the city's industrial port. But under his United Auto Workers contract, Fitch will get his full pay and benefits for two more years, which will cover medical bills for his seriously ill wife.

"I always felt safe there," Fitch said this week as he neared the end of 39 years on the job.

The cost of supporting workers like Fitch is one reason GM's finances are a wreck and its bonds have sunk to junk status. The company also has too many old products and too many old factories, the legacy of its long run as the world's biggest automaker. As overseas rivals such as Toyota and Honda grow stronger in the United States, GM's plight only gets worse.

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With only 1,100 workers remaining from a peak of nearly 7,000, closing the Baltimore factory is a small step toward fixing the vast company. But "in many ways, it is a microcosm of what ails General Motors, " auto manufacturing expert Ronald E. Harbour said.

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The sprawling powder-blue plant began producing Chevrolets in 1935. It had a prime location, within sight of Baltimore's busy marine terminals and access to rail and major roadways. When Fitch went to work at the factory in 1966, GM accounted for half of all new vehicle sales in the United States -- its share is roughly 25 percent today -- and Baltimore was one of its top regional plants.

"We was always number one back in the '60s and '70s, in quality and everything else," said John J. Hollis Sr., 60, who has worked at the plant since he was 18. The assembly line was tough work -- Hollis called it being on "the iron horse" -- but employees loved the steady pay and good benefits.

"I was a bodybuilder back in those days, but when I got home my eyes were bloodshot and I was tired as hell," Hollis said this week, enjoying an after-work cigar at home a mile from the factory. "But what the hell. I did a good day's work . . . and it felt good."

Harder than it had to be
By modern standards, that assembly work was harder than it had to be. The Baltimore plant is built on two levels, an archaic design that requires extra effort. "When you bring in material and parts, you want to bring it right in the door and be as close to the point of use as possible," said Harbour, the manufacturing expert. "If you have to . . . somehow crate it upstairs to the second floor, it's a lot of non-value-added activity."

As Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota and other foreign-owned competitors began building plants in the United States, they used one-level designs that were far more efficient. New factories also can build more than one type of product to quickly respond to market whims. Most of GM's 20 factories nationwide can't do that, and they're suffering because of it.

Baltimore workers felt helpless as that shift took place. "Our government let the imports come in and do that to us," Hollis said, standing on his porch by a crisp American flag and wearing a T-shirt proclaiming, "If you don't like my attitude, dial 1-800-EAT-[expletive]." He's never owned an imported vehicle, only GM products, and believes U.S. workers can match quality with anyone in the world.

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