Workers at Stellantis plants in the UK are fighting against job cuts in the US and around the world

A team of WSWS reporters conducted a campaign at the Vauxhall car plant in Luton, England on Friday to alert workers to the impending job losses being implemented by parent company Stellantis in the US and internationally.

The Luton plant, which produces larger vans with petrol and diesel engines, is one of two UK car plants owned by Stellantis. The other plant is in Ellesmere Port in the north-west of England and produces the Vauxhall Combo-e, Citroën e-Berlingo, Peugeot e-Partner and FIAT E-Doblò electric vans and their passenger car equivalents. At least £100 million has been invested in the redevelopment of the Ellesmere Port plant.

Both UK plants are at risk of closure as global competition among electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers intensifies.

In January 2021, Groupe PSA and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles merged to form Stellantis. Stellantis employs hundreds of thousands of people in 30 countries worldwide and owns many brands, including Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Citroën, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Lancia, Maserati, Opel, Peugeot and Vauxhall.

Both British plants are currently undergoing their annual summer maintenance. Workers told WSWS teams that they had no knowledge of the impending layoffs in the US. At the truck assembly plant in Warren, Michigan, 2,450 workers are to be laid off in early October.

Even more massive job cuts are being prepared at Stellantis' Italian site. On August 8, the company announced that up to 12,000 jobs could be lost in 2025. This will result in the loss of another 13,000 jobs at suppliers in Italy.

Workers at both British plants accused the union bureaucracy of keeping them in the dark about the job losses.

Stellantis is using its position as a global corporation to demand additional subsidies from the British Labour government under Sir Keir Starmer, including changes in sales tax policy – backed by the threat of relocating production elsewhere.

In April, Stellantis boss Carlos Tavares said the then Conservative government's electric vehicle policy was “terrible” and threatened to bankrupt carmakers. Tavares complained about the government's zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) rule, which came into force in 2023 and requires manufacturers to meet increasing annual electric vehicle sales targets or face fines. This rule is a prerequisite to meeting the goal of 100 percent of new cars and vans sold in the UK being zero-emission vehicles by 2035, and 80 percent of new cars and 70 percent of new vans by 2030. Tavares said this was “twice the natural demand of the market,” adding: “To survive, companies need to be in the black… I'm not going to sell cars at a loss.”