Toronto, Ontario — You take the good with the bad in this world—for Stellantis workers, the bad comes with the company’s announcement of potential layoffs, however, to mitigate these layoffs, comes some good.
Stellantis is offering retirement packages to employees, in the attempt to reduce the total number of job cuts implemented.
The initial Tuesday announcement of potential retirement buyouts raised questions over whether job cuts were forthcoming.
The full truth came out Wednesday, as the company confirmed that layoffs would be taking place over the coming months.
“As we transition to a sustainable, mobility tech company, we continue to review our operations for efficiencies,” the company explained in a press release Tuesday.
“We are hoping to minimize any potential layoffs with the retirement incentive packages,” said LouAnn Gosselin, head of communications at Stellantis.
The incentives are being offered with the aim “to minimize the impact on our workforce.”
These layoffs come amid remarkable investment in electric vehicles and battery production in Canada, as well as for the Stellantis brand. An investment of $3.6 billion was allotted earlier this year to renovate and retool the Brampton and Windsor manufacturing plants. Stellantis also plans to build a $4.9 billion battery plant in the Windsor area.
The automaker has not yet released details on the scope of the buyout packages being offered nor does it have an estimate of how many employees will accept the offered buyouts.
More details will arrive Monday. Employees will then have two weeks to decide on whether they will accept their buyout offers or not.
The Windsor and Brampton plants represent almost 5,800 full-time employees in total.
So what do you think about the potential job cuts? Is Stellantis doing the right thing by at least offering packages to employees facing job cuts? Or is a company with such lucrative investments in the wrong for shedding a portion of their workforce?
