A major American auto manufacturer reportedly laid off about 1,000 of its employees on Monday, including about 600 workers based in the U.S. in a bid to streamline current operations:
General Motors (GM) is making cuts in its software and services business, which was recently put under the command of two former Apple executives in a partial retreat from a hiring spree over the last several years, according to The Wall Street Journal. Monday's layoffs stand as the most recent job cuts at GM, which reached buyout agreements with approximately 5,000 salaried employees in 2023 as part of a cost-cutting effort and got rid of several hundred executive positions in February of that year, according to Reuters.
[...] The layoffs are not related to a specific cost-reduction initiative but are instead a result of the company leadership's review of the business and an effort to find more opportunities for efficiency, a GM spokesperson told the DCNF [Daily Caller News Foundataion]. Monday's job cuts followed a decision by the two new GM executives from Apple, Baris Cetinok and Dave Richardson, to streamline the service and software business, sources familiar with the matter told the WSJ.
The spokesperson could not comment as to how many jobs were affected by Monday's actions but said that around 600 jobs would be affected at the company's global technical center in Warren, Michigan.
Previously: GM to Slash 1500 Jobs at Lordstown, Ohio Plant
Related: Tesla Lays Off 'More Than 10%' of its Global Workforce
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The World Socialist Web Site reports:
In spite of a continuous chorus in the media of a booming economy creating robust job numbers, General Motors is unleashing a new round of attacks on autoworkers in North America as part of a global cost-cutting offensive against the working class.
The corporation announced on [April 13] it will cut one of two operating shifts at its massive Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant, cutting as many as 1,500 jobs effective June 15. As recently as 2016, the plant was operating three shifts around the clock with nearly 4,000 workers. By the end of June only 1,500 will remain.
As sales for the compact Chevy Cruze, the only vehicle produced at the facility, began to slip, GM shuttered the third shift in January 2017, axing 800 jobs. Over the course of 2017, the plant was idled for weeks at a time and rumors began to circulate about the impending layoffs.
As an indication of the severity of the cuts, this is the first time since the recession of the 1980s that the plant will operate with only one shift.
[...] The company sold 450,000 fewer vehicles to dealers last year than they did in 2016, but because of aggressive cost-cutting attacks on the workers, imposed by the union, which include everything from an expansion of Temporary Part Time employees at less than half pay, widespread layoffs and shutdowns[,] GM pretax profits for 2017 topped $12.8 billion.
US passenger car sales are on track to decline for the fifth straight year while sales of light trucks are setting records. US sales of compact cars dropped 10 percent in the first quarter and 5.8 percent through 2017.
Lordstown is not the only plant affected by this shift. GM's Detroit-Hamtramck factory, for example, relies heavily on production of small and midsize sedans, including the Buick LaCrosse, Cadillac CT6, Chevrolet Impala, and the Chevrolet Volt. In October, the automaker announced plans to cut about 200 jobs there and halt production beginning November 20 through the Christmas break, affecting 1,500 jobs over the holidays. The second shift was eliminated in March 2017, eliminating 1,300 jobs.
[...] The same conditions are developing in [GM] factories everywhere as GM pursues its cost-cutting strategy with a vengeance.
Tesla has announced layoffs of "more than 10%" of its global workforce in an internal company-wide email:
For the last few months, it has looked like Tesla might be preparing for a round of layoffs. Tesla told managers to identify critical team members, and paused some stock rewards while canceling some employees' annual reviews. It also reduced production at Gigafactory Shanghai.
Then, over the weekend, we heard rumors that these layoffs were about to happen, which came to us from multiple independent sources, as we reported on yesterday. The rumors indicated that layoffs could be as high as 20%, and in addition we heard that Tesla would shorten Cybertruck production shifts at Gigafactory Texas (despite CEO Elon Musk's recent insistence that Cybertruck is currently production constrained).
Now those rumors have been confirmed – though with a lower number – in a company-wide email sent by Musk, which leaked soon after it was sent.
[...] The news follows a bad quarterly delivery report in which Tesla significantly missed delivery estimates, and had a rare year-over-year reduction in sales. While Tesla does not break out sales by geographical region, the main dip seems to have come from China, where Chinese EV makers are ramping quickly both in the domestic and export market.
Full text of email available at TFA.
Previously: Tesla is Reportedly Planning Layoffs
Losing ground in the race to produce electric vehicles, German and French carmakers are heading toward a disruptive wave of factory closures:
Volkswagen AG is considering factory closures in Germany for the first time in its 87-year history, parting with tradition and risking a feud with unions in a step that reflects the deep woes roiling Europe's auto industry.
After years of ignoring overcapacity and slumping competitiveness, the German auto giant's moves are likely to kick off a broader reckoning in the industry. The reasons are clear: Europe's efforts to compete with Chinese rivals and Tesla Inc. in electric cars are faltering. (full article is paywalled)
"If even VW mulls closing factories in Germany, given how hard that process will be, it means the seas have gotten very rough," Pierre-Olivier Essig, a London-based equities analyst at AIR Capital, told Bloomberg. "The situation is very alarming."
[...] Car sales in Europe are down nearly one-fifth from prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and EV demand has slackened as Germany and Sweden have removed and reduced incentives to purchase the vehicles, Bloomberg reported. As a result, Chinese EV manufacturer BYD has jumped into the European market, pricing its Seagull model at just $9,700 before tax, a far cry from the European's average EV cost of $48,000 in 2022.
VW began downsizing in July, with its Audi subsidiary cutting 90% of its 3,000 person workforce at its manufacturing plant in Brussels, Belgium, according to Bloomberg.
The company's share price is now approaching the lows of its 2015 "diesel crisis," when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency accused the company of installing illegal software in its cars in order to artificially improve its results on diesel emission tests, BBC News reported. The company also posted a €100 million net cash flow loss on its automotive business in the first half of 2024.
Related:
- South Korean EV Battery Makers Reporting Big Losses as EV Demand Slows
- General Motors Lays Off Hundreds Of US Workers
- Auto Woes
- Why are All the EVs so Expensive?
A multinational automaker prepared to lay off more than 2,000 American workers in August after benefiting handsomely from the Biden administration's subsidies for electric-vehicle production:
Stellantis, the parent company to famous brands like Ram and Jeep, has been awarded hundreds of millions in grants from the federal government to promote its EV manufacturing. But the Biden administration's largesse has not prevented the company from laying off American workers.
In July, the Department of Energy awarded Stellantis subsidiary Chrysler a $334.8 million grant to convert a shuttered Illinois plant into a facility for building EVs and another $250 million grant to make a ...(aaaand, paywall)
The AP ran a story a few weeks ago foreshadowing this action:
The statement comes as the company faces increased capital spending to make the transition from gasoline vehicles to electric autos. It also has reported declining U.S. sales in the first quarter, and it has higher costs due to a new contract agreement reached last year with the United Auto Workers union. Stellantis has about 43,000 factory workers.
[...] Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares has said his company has to work on cutting costs globally in order to keep electric vehicles affordable for the middle class. Electric vehicles, he has said, cost about 40% more than those powered by gasoline. Without cost reductions, EVs will be too expensive for the middle class, shrinking the market and driving costs up more, Tavares has said.
I've been working on cars for most of my life and my observation is Chrysler/Ram are the worst vehicles on the road. I also own two Jeeps that are 50+ years old, however Chrysler has ruined the Jeep name by what I assume is cutting corners to save money because they're poorly designed and flimsy. Interesting the powers that be at Stellantis don't seem to be concerned about these issues.
Previously: Chrysler to Go All-Electric by 2028, Starting with the Airflow in 2025
Related:
• General Motors Lays Off Hundreds Of US Workers
• Tesla Lays Off 'More Than 10%' of its Global Workforce
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 21 2024, @07:11PM (3 children)
Autoworkers at risk from automation... oh, the irony.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2024, @07:50PM (2 children)
Reading between the lines of the Reuters story, it sounds more like they simply hired too many people, expecting that the electric car portion of the business was going to grow faster than it has.
The Warren Tech Center is a big campus, about a full square mile, including a small test track. 600 people will make a small dent in the employment there, might be a little easier to find a parking spot going forward...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 21 2024, @08:09PM (1 child)
Square mile is 640 acres, so one commuter car per acre, roughly...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2024, @09:20PM
The GM way is to hire and fire, and pay well while you are hired.
Culture at Ford is a little different, less likely to hire people when they need them (so staff is overworked when it's busy) but if you do get in then less likely to fire you when the business has a downturn. Ford traditionally pays a little less, but does have this tradition of "somewhat more" job security.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday August 21 2024, @10:25PM (3 children)
To give some context, google claims 163K employees with an average tenure around 4 years.
So figure they hire about 40K per year and about 40K leave (fire/quit/retire/die). Another way to look at it is natural attrition would be about 110 people quit per day. So if you've ever had a job where you had emergency "cut access immediately" trouble tickets, GM is big enough to have over a hundred of those tickets per day under normal circumstances. Probably more Monday thru Thursday than on the weekends.
Anyway, my point is they downsized about "ten days" worth of normal attrition in one day, although more reasonably its just about a typical work week.
Its important to keep context like that, because a 2000 person silicon valley startup firing 1000 people is a bit different than giant GM downsizing about one weeks worth of employees.
(Score: 4, Informative) by fliptop on Wednesday August 21 2024, @10:53PM (2 children)
Yeah, but I wonder who was actually laid off [soylentnews.org].
I should've included that story as previously in the parent article. My bad.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2024, @03:23AM
Better late than never, thanks for the look back about a year and a half. As you suggest, it's likely that many of the recent 600 GM layoffs were hired out of the Bay Area layoffs at the start of 2023.
As I wrote earlier, GM hires and fires on how the business is doing now. Electric cars not selling, time for layoffs.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday August 22 2024, @04:18PM
Yeah, I get what you're saying that they provided generic corporateese "a result of the company leadership's review of the business and an effort to find more opportunities for efficiency" whereas the real story might be they axed some specific model or technology, where 1000 people might be a bigger story if the EV battery dept only had 1100 people before the layoffs.
Thats an interesting take on it; I took them at face value that it was just generic cost cutting across the board.