Leeds Assembly

Leeds Assembly was a General Motors automobile factory in Leeds, Missouri. It was closed in 1988. The factory produced the A-bodies and J-bodies.

The Leeds Assembly Plant is located in the Leeds district of Kansas City, Missouri, at 6817 Stadium Drive. The GM operations are closed, and the facility has been sold and is now used as a warehouse and for outdoor storage.

At its peak employment, over 4,500 persons hourly and salary worked at the Leeds plant producing 60 vehicles per hour on two production shifts.

The Leeds Assembly Plant began operations in 1929 as two separate divisions with GM-controlled Fisher Body and Chevrolet plants under one roof. Each division had its own staff including engineers and administrative positions. The wall down the length of the Leeds facility completely separated operations of Fisher Body and Chevrolet operations, and the car bodies were literally pushed through a hole in the wall from Fisher Body to the Chevrolet side.

The Leeds plant was one of the earliest sit-down strike locations, following the initial sit-down strike at the assembly plant in Atlanta. On December 16, 1936, Fisher Body workers began an eight-day strike that only ended because of the inability to bring food into the plant for workers. The basis for the strike was the firing of an employee the previous day; however Fisher Body employees were said to be paid less than Chevrolet workers and were to have had less job security, and the United Auto Workers (UAW) was pressing for national recognition of the union.

Without car bodies being passed through the hole, the production of Chevrolet vehicles quickly ceased. On February 17, 1937, two months after UAW members at the Leeds plant sat down on their jobs, GM recognized the UAW, altering automobile labor relations.

Plants were operated under Chevrolet Assembly management prior to General Motors Assembly Division management (most established pre-1945). Additional Chevrolet Assembly plants were located at Buffalo, New York and Oakland, California. Framingham, Massachusetts is unusual in that it changed from Buick-Oldsmobile-Pontiac Assembly management to Chevrolet management prior to becoming GMAD.

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