As General Motors moves to permanently eliminate 1,140 jobs at its Factory Zero Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Center beginning January 5, 2026, workers are seeking a way to organize a fight against the layoffs. The job cuts, imposed after months of forced overtime and temporary shutdowns, are being carried out with the acquiescence of the United Auto Workers, which has offered no plan to defend jobs as GM continues to reap billions in profits.
In recent days, Factory Zero workers—many facing indefinite or permanent layoffs—have written to the World Socialist Web Site describing desperation, anger and a growing recognition that neither GM nor the union apparatus intends to defend them. Tens of thousands of workers have accessed and widely shared WSWS articles and videos exposing the layoffs, the silence of the UAW and the broader assault on jobs throughout the auto industry.
“I work here at Factory Zero and it’s disappointing that we do so much hard work to keep up with quality and demanding numbers just to end up not knowing how we’re going to take care of our children,” one worker wrote. “These people show dedication and compassion for this place and we are being set aside like old shoes. We have the number one vehicle but we are losing our jobs. It’s just a hard thing to understand. We need help. Please.”
Factory Zero
Another worker described the collapse of contractual protections. “Every bit of the contract that we agreed and voted on has been tossed out and management does whatever they feel is necessary, without following the agreement, in order to better their individual selves at the expense of the worker.”
The worker continued, “Costs are being cut in every department and area that are causing a decline in the work environment. There is no solidarity, just individual agendas and abuse and ignorant use of power.”
Others emphasized the deterioration of safety and quality. “No suggestion or experience is taken into consideration from the seasoned worker regarding safety and quality and workplace conditions,” one wrote. “Workers are being looked at under a microscope more than the actual company and product.”
An OPmobility worker summed up conditions across Michigan. “It’s horrible working in Michigan. Our government allows these companies to screw us over and control our lives. It’s modern day slavery.”
A Canadian worker warned of the broader implications. “If we don’t fight back, all we hold fair and firm will be gone within seven years. What happens in the U.S. affects the whole northern part of our continent.”
Factory Zero workers repeatedly pointed to the role of the UAW in enforcing the layoffs. One worker hired shortly before the ratification of the 2023 national contract said the union functions as an arm of management rather than an organization defending workers.
“The union is saying we may be called back September or October next year. Maybe,” the worker said. “I am actively looking for work. There is really nothing out here. I am not getting hired because I am still technically employed.”
Under the contract, workers placed on “indefinite layoff” retain health insurance for up to 24 months, but GM retains the right to force transfers anywhere in the country. “They can force me to go to a plant anywhere in the country,” the worker explained. “Having to sell your house at the last minute, if that’s where it goes to.”
This modern version of the notorious “GM gypsy” system has already imposed brutal conditions. A WSWS reporter recently spoke to a Factory Zero worker who drives two and a half hours each way from Fort Wayne, Indiana, every day to keep her job while seven months pregnant.
In interviews with the WSWS, Factory Zero workers also raised serious safety concerns tied to EV production.
“I was there when one of the cars exploded on the line,” one worker said, referring to a fully autonomous vehicle built at the plant in December 2023. “It caught fire and blew up in the middle of the line.”
That same month, a hi-lo struck a stack of batteries, triggering another major fire. Workers were evacuated repeatedly, including during a blizzard when they were forced to stand outside for hours before being sent back into the plant. “They cleared the fire and then put us back to work,” the worker said. “They had to get rid of the smell, so it was OK for us to breathe.”
The worker drew parallels to the independent investigation into the death of Stellantis worker Ronald Adams Sr. at the Dundee Engine Complex. “I can totally see that happening,” the worker said. “They don’t fix anything. They just get it back running as quickly as possible.”
Electric Hummers on the assembly line at GM’s Factory Zero [Photo by Jeffrey Sauger/GM]
The layoffs at Factory Zero are reverberating throughout GM’s EV supply chain, including at the Ultium Cells battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio, where hundreds of workers now face layoffs of six months or more.
An Ultium worker told the WSWS that management initially claimed 850 workers would be retained, only to later reduce that number to 750. “I feel bad for everybody else that’s going through it,” the worker said. “A lot of them are younger kids with families, car payments, house payments—right at the holidays.”
Battery production has been sharply curtailed, with entire sections of the plant shut down. The batteries produced in Lordstown supply vehicles assembled at Factory Zero, including the Hummer EV.
“This is very unsettling,” the worker said. “A couple months ago, we were told it was a temporary layoff. The fact that they can just change it like that—it could be us next.”
Despite being covered under the GM master agreement, Ultium workers report that the UAW has provided no leadership or plan to fight the layoffs. “We’ve just been getting little morsels of information,” the worker said. “That’s basically all that’s been said.”
The worker, a 20-year Delphi veteran, described decades of broken promises and union betrayals. Hired after Delphi’s 1999 spin-off from GM, he was excluded from pensions and transfer rights. “They promised we would get GM benefits. It never happened,” he said. “Then they went bankrupt.”
After taking a buyout, he later returned to the auto industry, only to confront the same cycle again. “You’re on a roller coaster ride, or you’re a cockroach with the head cut off,” he said. “That’s the best way I can describe it.”
He also warned about automation and artificial intelligence. “They want the fewest number of workers exploiting the hell out of them,” he said. Before the Factory Zero layoffs, workers there were being forced to work 72 to 80 hours a week.
The layoffs at Factory Zero are part of a far broader assault on auto jobs internationally. Ford has cancelled the electric F-150 Lightning program and scrapped next-generation EV projects, while Stellantis has taken similar measures. In Europe, the auto giants are carrying out massive job cuts, particularly in Germany, as companies retreat from EV investments and impose sweeping restructuring.
The immediate trigger for this wave of layoffs is the Trump administration’s cancellation of consumer tax credits for electric vehicles and its open hostility to EV production. But this shift, together with sweeping tariffs, is aimed at a deeper restructuring of the US auto industry. Under conditions of intensifying global competition, particularly with China, the ruling class is seeking to slash labor costs, intensify exploitation and discipline the working class, while preparing for broader economic and ultimately military confrontation. Workers are being made to pay for this strategy through mass layoffs, speedup and forced transfers.
On October 29, 2025, GM notified the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity of its decision to conduct a mass layoff at Factory Zero, raising questions about whether the company violated the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act by failing to provide 60 days’ notice.
The Factory Zero layoffs are part of a broader wave of job destruction across Michigan and Ohio, with WARN notices documenting hundreds of additional layoffs and closures at major auto suppliers and battery manufacturers.
In response, the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) has called for the mobilization of the working class to defend the right to a job through independent, internationally coordinated action. As explained in a recent World Socialist Web Site discussion responding to workers’ questions through Socialism AI, the destruction of jobs is not the result of market miscalculations but follows the logic of capitalism itself, which subordinates workers’ livelihoods to profit and shareholder demands.
What is required is the building of independent rank-and-file committees at Factory Zero, Ultium Cells and throughout the auto industry—organizations controlled by workers themselves and committed to uniting workers across plants, companies and national borders.
Workers who want to join this fight are urged to contact the World Socialist Web Site and connect with the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees.
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