A two-week shutdown in March at General Motors’ Fort Wayne assembly plant is part of a massive cutback in production the company plans in the first three months of next year. The automaker plans to build 250,000 fewer vehicles in the first quarter of 2009.

The Fort Wayne plant will be shut down the weeks of March 2 and 9, said plant spokeswoman Alicia Kocher. Some other manufacturing facilities will be closed for as long as a month, Kocher said.

United Auto Workers Local 2209 Shop Chairman Mark Orr said workers were told late Friday morning that they would be scheduled for straight eight-hour days in January and February. After the break, they would return to work in the second half of March.

Unless the company is in bankruptcy before March, the workers will receive state unemployment benefits plus a supplemental benefit from the company, raising their total layoff pay to 85 percent of their regular 40-hour pay. Orr said that if GM is in bankruptcy at the time of that shutdown, workers would receive only unemployment benefits. In Indiana, that is a maximum of $390 per week.

“It’s nerve-racking,” Orr said of the uncertainty over GM’s future. Late Thursday, a $14 billion federal assistance program for the domestic automakers was shot down by opponents in the Senate. Earlier Friday, the Bush administration announced that it would consider using money from the $700 billion Treasury Asset Recovery Program, TARP, to help the domestic auto companies.