It’s not a good week to be working at Stellantis. As it (finally) moves to try to sell EVs in the US, the automaker just laid off 400 US salaried tech workers and software engineers on Friday. Today the company announced that it was slashing more than 1,500 jobs in Turin, Italy, due to what it says are slow sales of its all-electric Fiat 500e city car.
Last Friday, some 400 salaried, nonunion workers in the US were told to work from home for a “mandatory remote work day,” and then all fired during a remote group video meeting, reported the Wall Street Journal. So much for the personal touch.
One mechanical engineer told Fox2 Detroit that “it was a mass firing of everybody that was on the call.” He added that he believes the rationale for the layoffs was to move jobs to “low-cost countries,” with Stellantis outsourcing jobs to India, Mexico, and Brazil. Stellantis says that the layoffs would affect about 2% of employees in those units “after rigorous organizational reviews.” In total, Stellantis had 11,800 salaried US employees as of the end of last year.
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