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General Motors to Lay Off 2,000 Employees in Ohio and Michigan

posted by janrinok on Saturday November 12 2016, @11:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-a-merry-christmas dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

General Motors plans to lay off 2,000 employees at two U.S. auto plants in early 2017, the automaker said on Wednesday.

GM's Lordstown, Ohio and Lansing, Michigan plants build slow-selling cars sold by Chevrolet and Cadillac. GM said it will furlough the employees when it cuts the third shift at both plants in January.

GM says the furlough is a response to what the company believes will be a continued shift from cars to crossovers and trucks. The Lordstown plant builds the compact Chevrolet Cruze, whose U.S. sales through October were down 20%. The Lansing Grand River plant builds the Cadillac ATS and CTS, whose sales were down 17% through October.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 13 2016, @02:23AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 13 2016, @02:23AM (#426185)

    This just sounds like GM being slightly smart for a change. Note that they are reducing the plants from 3 shifts to 2 shifts, not closing them down. Given the thousands of GM cars (and trucks) parked in the back of a nearby mall and other places around here, it's about time that GM started cutting back or they will have to use large incentives to sell all those cars.

    Same story in http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-gm-factories-20161109-story.html [chicagotribune.com]

    > Laid-off workers will get supplemental pay and state unemployment benefits that will amount to most of their wages for a year.
    > The company doesn't know when the workers will be called back to the factories, said spokesman Tom Wickham. "Looking ahead at 2017 we know that the car market continues to soften and the crossover (SUV) and full-size truck market continues to grow," he said.
    > Americans have been moving away from cars toward trucks and SUVs for several years now as gas prices have dropped to near $2 per gallon and the larger vehicles have become more efficient. Baby boomers and young people are attracted to smaller SUVs because of their cargo-carrying ability, high seating position and visibility. Also, most are now built on car underpinnings, so they are more maneuverable than old truck-based SUVS.
    > Last month, 61.6 percent of U.S. new vehicle sales were trucks and SUVs while cars dropped to 38.4 percent, according to Autodata Corp. A year ago trucks and SUVs accounted for 57.6 percent of sales.

    Ford already shut down a few plants for a week or so, same problem of oversupply. The auto business is cyclical, that's reality.

    Now, if we did something to raise gas prices a bit, all of a sudden people would buy less of these giant Stupid Useless Vehicles.