Stellantis laid off an additional 700 employees on Friday amid the United Auto Workers strike.
The new layoffs involve employees from the Kokomo (Indiana) Transmission and Kokomo (Indiana) Casting Plants. Stellantis said the layoffs are due to the strike at the Toledo Assembly Complex. According to the company, a total of 1,340 Stellantis employees have been temporarily laid off across three states.
“As a consequence of the strike action at the Toledo Assembly Complex (TAC), Stellantis has announced temporary layoffs for an additional 700 employees from the Kokomo (Indiana) Transmission and Kokomo (Indiana) Casting Plants, effective Oct. 13. In total, the Company now has 1,340 employees on temporary layoff across three states. These plants have reached maximum inventory levels of the parts or components they supply for the Jeep Wrangler or Jeep Gladiator. Stellantis continues to closely monitor the impact of the UAW strike action on our manufacturing operations.”
Stellantis
The layoffs were announced just hours after UAW President Shawn Fain shared a live video update to social media. Fain did not expand the strike, but he did say the union is going to be more aggressive going forward.
On Friday night, Ford Motor Company informed 550 employees not to report to work starting Oct. 16.
The strike at the Kentucky Truck Plant and Chicago Assembly Plant has impacted operations at several other facilities, including 306 employees at Sharonville Transmission Plant, 100 employees at Dearborn Stamping Plant, 65 employees at Dearborn Diversified Manufacturing Plant, 45 employees at Rawsonville Components Plant, 29 employees at Sterling Axle Plant and 12 employees at Chicago Stamping Plant.
---> Here’s how many autoworkers have been laid off by Big Three amid UAW strike
Local 4′s Cassidy Johncox reports: As of Friday, Oct. 13, about 34,000 of the UAW’s 146,000 autoworkers were striking at 44 facilities across the U.S. amid ongoing talks with General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Stellantis. The strike has grown almost every week since beginning at three facilities on Sept. 15, the day after the union’s contracts expired with the carmakers.
UAW President Shawn Fain has typically announced new strike locations during his Friday social media updates, which he has held each week since the strike began. He did not announce any new strike locations on Friday, but did threaten that the union is “entering a new phase of this fight,” and that more strikes will come whenever leaders feel talks don’t progress enough.
“We’re done waiting until Fridays to escalate a strike,” Fain said. “We are prepared, at any time, to call on more locals to stand up and walk out.”
Fain made that point earlier this week, when he and other union leaders on Wednesday called for a strike at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, adding about 9,000 workers to the nationwide effort. Prior to Wednesday, the UAW had allowed the Big Three to continue producing pickup trucks and large SUVs, their most profitable vehicles, only shutting down facilities that make midsize pickup trucks, SUVs and commercial vans.
It now appears the union will be moving in on facilities that are more valuable to the carmakers in hopes of pushing the them closer to the union’s demands, and faster. Fain said Friday that Ford’s Kentucky plant -- which makes the Ford Super Duty line of pickups, Ford Expeditions and the Lincoln Navigator -- is the company’s largest plant, earning “$48,000 in revenue per minute.”
---> Read on: UAW ‘done waiting ‘til Fridays’ to announce new auto strike locations