Car Companies In USA: GM Announces Mass Layoffs After Selling European Subsidiary To PSA

The same day General Motors Co. announced the sale of its German subsidiary Opel, along with its U.K.-based brand Vauxhall, to the French automaker PSA Group for the equivalent of $1.9 billion, the company reportedly notified employees Monday that 1,100 workers would be laid off at an assembly plant in a small city 90 miles west of Detroit.

The Detroit-based automaker planned to shift construction of its GMC Acadias from the Lansing Delta Township assembly plant to a factory just south of Nashville, while continuing the construction of its Buick Enclave and Chevrolet Traverse at the Michigan plant, the local broadcaster WILX10 reported Monday. The company employs 215,000 workers globally, according to its official website.

General Motors workers faced several announcements of mass layoffs at the end of 2016, with 2,000 employees losing their jobs at plants in Lordstown, Ohio, and Lansing, Michigan, in January of this year—what was, according to CNN, the company’s first round of layoffs since 2010—and 1,300 at a Detroit factory in March.

The layoffs came despite record profits of $12 billion in 2016, allowing the company to award 52,000 hourly employees with up to $12,000 as part of a “profit sharing payout,” according to a February GM press release. It also reported a year-over-year total sales increase of 4 percent for the month of February thanks to “record sales of crossovers, large SUVs and pickups,” according to March release.

The company was hit particularly hard during the 2008 financial crisis, letting 47,000 workers go in 2009—one of the largest mass layoffs in the past two decades.

More recently, GM has faced criticism, most notably from President Donald Trump, for outsourcing assembly jobs to plants in Mexico.

Chief Executive Mary Barra, who sat on the president’s business advisory council, countered at the time that such decisions were made years in advance, and has lately been among the voices of opposition to Trump’s proposed isolationist tariffs.