General Motors will lay off 1,695 workers at its Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas, the company said in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice earlier this week.
A GM spokesperson, confirming the layoffs initially reported by Automotive News, said the first of two rounds will begin on November 18, affecting 686 full-time workers temporarily and terminating 250 temporary employees.
Under the second phase, to begin on Jan. 12 of next year, 759 full-time workers will be temporarily laid off, the spokesperson confirmed.
In May, GM said it would pause production of the Cadillac XT4 after January 2025 in Kansas, resulting in layoffs of production employees until manufacturing resumed in late 2025 for both the Bolt EV and XT4 on the same assembly line.
“As previously announced in May, GM is investing approximately $390 million in our Fairfax Assembly Plant to add production of the new Chevrolet Bolt EV,” the GM spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Reuters on Saturday.
“To facilitate the installation of new tooling, employees will be placed on a temporary layoff until production resumes in mid-2025,” the spokesperson added.
In August, the company also laid off more than 1,000 salaried employees worldwide across its software and service units. (Reporting by Surbhi Misra in Bengaluru Editing by Alistair Bell and Matthew Lewis)