GM stops Chevy Bolt production (for now), lays off 1,314 workers

General Motors has announced a mass layoff of 1,314 workers at two Michigan plants, including one that produces the Chevy Bolt EV, which the company has discontinued, for now at least.

US autoworkers have been hit hard in the past week, with Stellantis also announcing that it is laying off thousands of workers from its Jeep plants in Detroit and Toledo, Ohio. 

GM says it plans to cut 945 jobs from the assembly plant in Lake Orion due to the company ending its production of the Bolt EV and EUV on December 18. The factory is slated to produce Chevrolet Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV on GM’s new Ultium EV platform after a $4 billion investment, but the company has pushed back the launch from 2024 to late 2025. To make that happen, “construction includes significant facility and capacity expansion at the site, including new body and paint shops and new general assembly and battery pack assembly areas,” GM spokesman Kevin Kelly told The Detroit Press.

GM says it is bringing back the popular Chevy Bolt EV, at least the larger Bolt EUV, with the next-gen model to reemerge on the Ultium platform in 2025. The automaker is phasing out its BEV2 platform and shifting to the Ultium battery architecture, which will be used for its next-gen EVs including the Cadillac Lyriq, Hummer EV, Chezy Silverado EV, among others.

Meanwhile, an additional 369 worker at the Lansing Grand River Assembly plant, where GM produced its Chevy Camaro Coupe, will end this week. Production on the muscle car ended yesterday, December 14, with final vehicles rolling off the assembly line.

Layoffs for the Orion plant start January 2, according to Kelly. Workers there who are members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) will be “offered other opportunities in Michigan,” including jobs at Factory ZERO in Detroit-Hamtramck, according to CNN.

All this is happening after GM finalized its new contract with the UAW after what was one of the longest auto worker strikes in 25 years.

GM said it had to restructure now that, among other things, the new UAW contract includes workers of GM Subsystem LLC, a subsidiary of GM. According to The Detroit News, these workers had their own contract before signing and were paid less than traditional GM production workers for doing the same jobs. Now as part of the UAW contract, their previous wages of $18.50 to $22 per hour are bumped up to full production wages in the new agreement, which top out at $35.88 per hour.