The Belvidere, Illinois plant is closing after 60 years.
Stellantis announced in June the vehicles will be built in Windsor, Ontario, dashing the hopes of Belvidere boosters and dealing a major blow to the state’s EV manufacturing ambitions. Stellantis is also building a $5 billion battery plant in Windsor…
In December, Stellantis announced the indefinite layoffs and the plant idling. The final shift is scheduled to punch out Feb. 28, the 5 million-square-foot auto plant will go dark and Belvidere will face an uncertain future…
The state has been aggressively pursuing EV development, enacting legislation in an effort to get manufacturers and suppliers to locate in Illinois, with decidedly mixed results. It has been lobbying hard for Stellantis to electrify the Belvidere plant.
Seeing the Stellantis EV platform, thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in investment head to Canada while Belvidere sits idle was not part of the state’s development playbook.
Now it seems the UAW wants the massive Belvidere, IL plant reopened.
A focal point of the plan is possible closures of 10 “Mopar” parts and distribution centers, which are scattered across the country, to consolidate them into larger “Amazon-like” distribution centers, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks are private and ongoing. The proposal included a potential “Mega Hub” at Belvidere Assembly, which the automaker indefinitely idled in February.
Three sources said other manufacturing facilities included in the proposal are Tipton Transmission Plant in Indiana; the partially decommissioned Trenton Engine Complex and the already idled Mount Elliott Tool & Die in Michigan; and the idled Belvidere Assembly. Also included were a Detroit warehouse, office space and the automaker’s North American headquarters and technology center, a massive 500-acre campus in metro Detroit formerly used as Chrysler’s world headquarters…
Reopening the Illinois plant would be a major win for UAW leaders, but they have concerns about employment, uprooting workers and families, along with pay and automation, according to two of the sources.
The union will win. The question is when will the three auto makers get a grip. Managements at times isolate themselves.
Truth is I am so put out by US car manufacturers I will only turn to Japanese brands. The Japanese workers have been better taken care of for decades. Management teams in Japan are not obnoxious in this way at all.
Management earns or does not. The strikes could permanently hurt the three companies. Not just reduce the profit margin but hurt the companies because the Millennials are watching. Too much bashing of labor and another generation of buyers will be lost.
The big three have been losing market share for forty years. Remember when they went crying to the government they hate for protection from Japanese automakers in the early 80s? Their discontinuing everything but big SUVs and trucks is setting themselves up for another collapse.
It seems to be a common flaw in Shiny management, that it only hears what it wants to hear, and the union, the Japanese, and the government are their universal scapegoats for everything, rather than management looking in the mirror. Management tends to be inbred to perpetuate this mindset, as the only people who get ahead are the ones who sing the company song.