Around 400 people were laid off from FCA US earlier today. Stellantis told Automotive News.
The layoffs were brought up during online meetings in an unexpected “work from home” day. Rumors had been swirling for some time, with more specific rumors of “hundreds of layoffs today” arriving this morning from Allpar and other sources.
The company blamed competition, uncertainty, optimization of costs, alignment of resources, and other buzzwords, while noting that laid off employees will get severance pay. Stellantis did not mention its increased investments in VTOL maker Archer Aviation or its stock buybacks.
The layoffs don’t take effect until the end of the month. Automotive News noted that the WARN Act, a federal law, requires 60 days’ public notice when 500 employees will be laid off in any 30-day period, suggesting that there might be more under-500 layoffs in the future. The 400 or so employees announced today are around 2% of the US “engineering, technology, and software” staff.
Some of the layoffs may be due to the reduction of gasoline-engine development, which is likely going to be restricted to the Hurricane engine for the time being. There do not appear to be any completely new gasoline engines planned for development in the United States, not counting variants of the 3.0 Hurricane six-cylinder.
Update: Around 2,500 people have been trimmed from Italian job rolls since this announcement; and Stellantis had already cut jobs in France.
