Umair
Jeep-maker Stellantis is idling production at plants in Canada and Mexico and will temporarily lay off 900 workers in the Midwest.
Beginning April 7, Stellantis will pause production at its Windsor Assembly Plant for weeks, with operations set to resume the week of April 21. The decision will impact 4,500 represented Windsor employees.
“While we had heard rumours of potential downtime, the company said there are multiple factors at play, with the primary driver behind the final decision being this afternoon’s announcement from U.S. President Donald Trump of the U.S. tariffs,” said Unifor Local 444 President James Stewart in a social media post Wednesday night.
The automaker is also temporarily pausing production at its Toluca (Mexico) Assembly Plant for April. The plant will idle production on April 7.
As a result of the pause, 900 workers at the company’s Warren Stamping and Sterling Stamping plants in Michigan, as well as its Indiana Transmission Plant, Kokomo Transmission Plant and Kokomo Casting Plant, are being laid off.
In a letter sent to employees Thursday morning, Antonio Filosa, Stellantis’ Chief Operating Officer for the Americas, said the automaker is continuing to assess the impacts of tariffs on its operations.
“We are continuing to assess the medium- and long-term effects of these tariffs on our operations, but also have decided to take some immediate actions, including temporarily pausing production at some of our Canadian and Mexican assembly plants. Those actions will impact some employees at several of our U.S. powertrain and stamping facilities that support those operations,” Filosa said.
Filosa says Stellantis acknowledges that “the current environment creates uncertainty. Be assured that we are very engaged with all of our key stakeholders, including top government leaders, unions, suppliers and dealers in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, as we work to manage and adapt to these changes. We are focused on taking responsible actions that are in the best interests of our customers, our business partners and you, our employees – wherever you work.”
In response to the layoffs, UAW President Shawn Fain said, “Stellantis continues to play games with workers’ lives. As we’ve shown time and again, they’ve got the money, the capacity, the product, and the workforce to employ thousands more UAW members in Michigan, Indiana, and beyond. These layoffs are a completely unnecessary choice that the company is making. It’s more of the same, and everything that’s wrong with our broken trade system. Companies like Stellantis use workers as collateral damage to pay the price for management’s poor decisions, and it’s unacceptable.”
