More than 300 temporary employees at Jeep’s Toledo Assembly Complex have been laid off. Their last day was Sunday.
The layoffs, which are permanent, have been circulating on social media and confirmed in media accounts by Mike Sawaya, shop chairman at United Auto Workers Local 12, which represents about 5,000 workers at the complex.
Posted on social media was a transcript of the robocall that 341 affected workers received this weekend.
The Toledo Jeep plant is owned by Stellantis NV. It makes the Jeep Wrangler SUV, its plug-in hybrid variant, and the Jeep Gladiator mid-sized pickup. Sales of the Wranglers and Gladiators have been slumping.
In a statement, a Stellantis spokesman said Stellantis regularly analyzes staffing levels at its manufacturing facilities as a normal course of business to ensure that they are operating as efficiently as possible.
“Following an operational review, and to ensure compliance with contractual commitments, the company is reducing the number of supplemental employees across much of our U.S. footprint,” the statement said. “Overall, the reductions at the Toledo Assembly Complex and at the Detroit Assembly Complex-Mack resulted in fewer employees being impacted than originally estimated.”
Mr. Sawaya of UAW Local 12 could not be reached for comment at the union hall.
Stellantis informed the UAW in December that up to 1,225 temporary employees at Toledo Jeep could lose their jobs beginning in February because stringent emission regulations in California made it impossible for the company to sell gasoline-powered Wranglers in large volumes there.
Production workers at the complex also were switched this year under the new UAW master contract with Stellantis to a traditional work schedule from a more flexible one that required hundreds of temporaries to fill gaps created by time off.
More than 500 of the temps at Toledo Jeep in recent weeks were made permanent under the new master contract and transferred to other Stellantis plants, including dozens to Detroit-area auto plants.
The robocall said that health insurance benefits would continue through March for the laid-off workers and wished them well “in your future endeavors.”
Stellantis is being careful with production volumes to try to keep excess inventory to a minimum, said Ivan Drury, director of Insights at car-shopping site Edmunds.com.
The amount of time gasoline-powered Wranglers sit on dealers’ lots nationally stands at 46 days, Mr. Drury said. It is 84 days for the plug-in hybrid version and a whopping 149 days for the slow-selling Gladiator.
He said the off-road capable vehicles are not for the casual driver to begin with. Stellantis’ emission problems in California and the 14 other states that follow its lead, coupled with new union work rules, give the company a lot to consider from a production and sales standpoint.
“They’re juggling way too many balls for a vehicle without a wide appeal,” Mr. Drury said.
First Published March 4, 2024, 6:01 p.m.
