Akebono Brakes will begin laying off its 450 workers at its Brake Plant in Elizabethtown KY in December. Akebono, a Japanese company manufacturing automobile brakes and brake parts, will continue layoffs until finally shuttering the plant in December 2026. Akebono has already shut down plants in both Tennessee and South Carolina in 2020. The planned Elizabethtown KY closure was announced in 2023.
Akebono claims the closures are due to a decline in business and their desire to move to a “One-Factory System” in the near future. This concentration of production from multiple factories to one means destruction of the overproduced means of production in the face of economic crisis, and for workers it means layoffs and growing unemployment, forcing down wages and forcing up work tempo for those who remain.
The plant has been operating in Elizabethtown for nearly 35 years. The plant’s workers are not unionized.
These closures are part of a larger trend developing with the economic crisis of imperialism, where the bosses are hitting workers with layoffs across the board, from steel to package delivery, and the automotive industry is no exception. East of Elizabethtown, Leggett and Platt, a manufacturer of a variety of engineered components used in homes and automobiles, is shutting down its plant in Georgetown, KY. Starting in November and continuing into 2026, layoffs will leave 100 workers at the Georgetown plant out of work. This year alone plant closures and layoffs have been announced for John Deere facilities in Iowa, automotive tire factories, the recently-unionized VW factory in Tennessee, to name a few.
The crisis in automotive manufacturing has led to factory consolidations, mass layoffs, tempo increases, and also worker struggles in defense of their rights—including the “Stand Up” strike at the Big Three automotive monopolies, held back by the business unions, and a unionization drive across the largely non-union South’s automotive industry.
Image: Akebono Brakes factory in Elizabethtown KY, Google Maps.
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