The French-Italian-American automaker announced on Friday that production of the entry-level Ram 1500 Classic pickup, made at this plant, has been discontinued.
French-Italian-American automaker Stellantis announced Friday that production of the entry-level Ram 1500 Classic pickup truck, made at a plant in Michigan (north), has been suspended, which could lead to the elimination of nearly 2,500 jobs starting in October . “With the introduction of the new Ram 1500, production of the Ram 1500 Classic at the pickup assembly plant in Warren, Michigan will be discontinued by the end of the year”explained the group in a press release.
The assembly line will therefore move to a single daily shift instead of two currently, and will only manufacture the four versions of the Jeep Wagoneer family already leaving this factory. On the other hand, other operations at the Warren Truck Plant complex — such as painting — will continue to operate on a two-shift basis, the manufacturer said. According to the web page dedicated to this plant on the Stellantis website, in June it employed 3,583 people, 3,358 of whom were hourly and covered by a collective agreement negotiated with the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.
Redundancies from 8 October
Asked by AFP, the UAW did not immediately respond. A maximum of 2,450 people are expected to be laid off starting October 8 as a result of this Ram 1500 Classic production shutdown. The Warren plant has been producing pickup trucks since 1938, most notably the Ram 1500 since 1993, but it has also made the Dodge Dakota and Mitsubishi Raider, the website states. A third shift, creating a thousand jobs, was added in March 2013, but after the new generation Ram 1500 was moved to the factory in Sterling Heights (Michigan), the line returned to two rotations during 2018.
An investment of $1.5 billion was made to meet the production of the Jeep Wagoneer, the first examples of which were sent to dealers in September 2021. Stellantis, resulting from the 2021 merger of Peugeot-Citroën and Fiat- Chrysler is considered one of them “Big Three”the historic American car manufacturers based in the Detroit region. The group owns fourteen brands.
