Mei W.
On April 3, auto monopoly Stellantis announced the layoff of 900 workers at five plants across Michigan and Indiana due to the temporary halting of production at two assembly plants in Ontario, Canada and Toluca, Mexico, as the implementation of 25% auto tariffs against the two countries resumed that day. The US plants where the layoffs will take place produce power trains and metal stampings for the halted assembly plants.
4,500 workers at the halted plant in Ontario, Canada will also be fired. The company stated that the pause is scheduled for two weeks at the Ontario plant and a month at the Toluca plant, while the length of the layoffs in the USA is indefinite.
President Shawn Fain of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW), which represents the laid off workers at the US plants, called the Stellantis layoffs “collateral damage” from the tariffs, which he previously described as “a tool in the toolbox to get these companies to do the right thing, and the intent behind it is to bring jobs back here, and, you know, invest in the American workers.”
Fain persists in blaming individual CEOs’ greed for the ravages capitalism itself forces on the working class. So far the UAW’s response to the newest Stellantis layoffs is a letter-writing campaign to the company with vague demands, calling Stellantis un-American for the very US imperialist project of exploiting factory workers in the third world, while appealing to the good graces of these same capitalists by saying they “didn’t build the company alone” but that the workers “helped”.
Democrat politicians denounce Trump’s tariffs for resulting in mass layoffs across industries, although they are divided on how best to peddle their blame game to obscure the nature of the crisis, where some call for the bringing back of “free trade” while others support the tariffs but criticize Trump’s execution of them.
The recent round of layoffs take place as automaker monopolies try to save their profitability through mass layoffs and production halts. Last fall, 4,250 Stellantis workers were laid off across multiple plants in Toledo, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan due to the idling of plants and production cuts, a number which does not include workers who were temporarily laid off for weeks due to pauses in production.
Image: Workers in a Stellantis factory in France in 2022, Wikimedia Commons, Ottaviani Serge
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