GM laying off 50 workers at Brownstown plant
The loss of General Motors Co.'s plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt will affect nearly half of the employees at the automaker's battery assembly plant in Brownstown Township.
GM filed a notice with the State of Michigan this week stating it will lay off 50 at Brownstown Battery, including 37 hourly workers represented by the United Auto Workers. A total of 116 workers are currently employed at the plant.
The layoffs at Brownstown, slated for Feb. 18, are expected to be permanent, GM said in its filing. Union represented workers will have the opportunity to transfer to other UAW-GM plants, but a GM spokeswoman said plans for those transfers have not been made yet.
On the Monday after Thanksgiving, GM announced a sweeping workforce and manufacturing restructuring for 2019 that will include idling five plants in the U.S. and Canada and cutting some 8,000 white collar jobs.
The affected workers at Brownstown worked on batteries for the Chevrolet Volt, which will stop production when GM idles the Detroit-Hamtramck plant next year. Brownstown was not part of the November plant announcements because the facility will continue operations despite losing workers.
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