Stellantis is offering to buy out thousands of its American white-collar employees as a result of the company’s transition to electric vehicles (EVs) — a move spurred by tax credits from President Joe Biden’s administration.
Executives with Stellantis — which owns Jeep, Chrysler, Ram, Dodge, and others — announced a buyout plan in which 6,400 of its 12,700 non-union American white-collar employees would be offered a “voluntary separation package.”
The move is designed to cut costs to afford the Biden green energy agenda, which includes rapidly transitioning the American auto industry to EVs — even as American consumers are increasingly not purchasing EVs — by offering lucrative tax credits to automakers.
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“As the U.S. automotive industry continues to face challenging market conditions, Stellantis is taking the necessary structural actions to protect our operations and the company,” Stellantis spokeswoman Jodi Tinson told the Detroit Free Press:
As we prepare for the transition to electric vehicles, Stellantis announced today that it will offer a voluntary separation package to assist those non-represented employees who would like to separate or retire from the company to pursue other interests with a favorable package of benefits. As we head into 2024, we remain committed to executing our Dare Forward 2030 strategy, which includes the launch of eight new electric vehicles. [Emphasis added]
Stellantis employees looking to take the buyout will have until the second week of December to make a decision.
The buyout offer comes only weeks after Stellantis struck a deal with the United Auto Workers (UAW) to raise wages, bring back cost-of-living allowances, and give employees a right to strike whenever the automaker closes a plant.
In return, Stellantis — as well as General Motors (GM) and Ford — is committing billions in investments to move ahead with Biden’s EV transition. In particular, Stellantis plans to build an EV battery plant in Belvidere, Illinois, which executives have said will create about 1,300 American jobs.
Also, at its plants in Toledo, Ohio; Warren, Michigan; Sterling Heights, Michigan; and Detroit, Michigan, Stellantis will produce a handful of all-electric versions of many of its existing models.
American auto workers, though, have long warned of “poverty wages” and having their jobs eliminated entirely as a result of Biden’s EV goals that the automakers are turning into a reality.
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Mainly, as Breitbart News has chronicled, American auto workers fear their jobs will eventually go to China since the communist country controls critical components of the EV battery supply chain.
To produce the lithium-ion batteries needed for EVs, American automakers are almost certain to coordinate with China — which controls nearly 70 percent of the world’s lithium, 95 percent of manganese, 73 percent of cobalt, 70 percent of graphite, and 63 percent of nickel.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.