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Unless it is halted by collective action by workers themselves, the coming week could be the last for 1,145 workers at the General Motors Factory Zero assembly plant in Detroit. The automaker plans to slash production to a single shift beginning January 5, 2026. The permanent layoffs are being imposed on the eve of the holiday shutdown, which runs from December 24 through January 4, leaving workers to face unemployment and the loss of healthcare during the most financially precarious time of the year.

The job cuts follow a brutal year in which Factory Zero workers were subjected to extreme levels of overtime, routinely working between 72 and 80 hours a week for much of 2024. These conditions were followed by irregular temporary layoffs, creating a cycle of exhaustion and insecurity. Both shifts were placed on temporary layoff until November 24, 2025, before GM announced the move to permanently eliminate more than 1,000 jobs.

The United Auto Workers bureaucracy has not even made a pretense of opposing the mass layoffs, which will only deepen the social crisis in the city which houses the headquarters of both GM and the UAW. The official poverty rate in the Motor City is already 35 percent, with 51 percent of children living in poverty, according to the census report.

In the statement “Mobilize to stop GM layoffs at Factory Zero in Detroit—Build rank-and-file committees,” the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) has called on workers to form independent committees capable of organizing a real fight, unifying workers across plants and borders and breaking out of the isolation imposed by the union bureaucracy. Only the mass, collective action by workers can stop the layoffs and fight for the right to secure, good-paying jobs for all.

The layoffs are not the result of any financial losses for GM. In October, the company raised its projected 2025 net profits to between $12 billion and $13 billion, up from a prior estimate of $10 billion to $12.5 billion. This followed record profits of $14.9 billion in 2024. GM stock has risen approximately 55 percent over the past year.

According to an investor note published December 12 on the financial website Trevis, “In the last decade, General Motors (GM) stock has returned $45 [billion] back to its shareholders through cold, hard cash via dividends and buybacks.” This represents 58.4 percent of GM’s current market capitalization—more than double the median payout ratio for companies listed on the S&P 500.

GM is also indefinitely laying off 550 workers at the Lordstown, Ohio Ultium Cells battery plant. An additional 850 workers there will be placed on temporary layoff effective January 5. And 710 workers will be temporarily laid off at the Spring Hill, Tennessee Ultium Cells battery plant beginning the same day.

Hundreds of workers at the nearby Ford Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, also remain on layoff, with company executives considering whether to scrap the F-150 Lightning EV pickup truck altogether.

This is part of a global jobs massacre in the auto industry. VW, Bosch, ZF and other German auto and auto parts companies have announced 50,000 job cuts in the first 10 months of 2025 alone.

Together, these cuts expose the fraudulent character of the claims by the automakers and the UAW that the electric vehicle transition would bring stable, high-quality jobs.

A young worker who was laid off from Factory Zero several months ago told the World Socialist Web Site that he had heard through the “rumor mill” that the GM Lake Orion plant—which has been closed for retooling for two years—could ramp up or resume production in the third quarter of 2026. The facility is currently being reconverted back to internal combustion engine production, after earlier being tooled for electric vehicles at enormous cost.

“When I was at Factory Zero, I think I was, for the first year, working 12-hour shifts,” he said. After being laid off for at least the second time in just a few years at GM, “I lost my healthcare. The Affordable Care Act subsidy is probably not going to be continuing next year, so it will be really tough for some of us.”

He described the complete lack of information from the United Auto Workers. “One of my buddies was like, ‘don’t really expect much from the local.’ I don’t think any of the people involved in working in the union actually know what’s going on … there’s just a lot of uncertainty.”

Contrasting the company’s soaring profits with the conditions facing workers, he said, “The stock price of the company keeps going up and up.” He noted that GM and other automakers had received massive tax cuts. “I thought the whole point of trickle down was for the money to trickle down. Stock prices are going up, and it’s not trickling down.”

He added that there had to be a way to “tax people that are getting rich off of stock buybacks” and said younger workers were increasingly alienated from both corporate-backed parties. “My generation, we are just tired; and we’ve only been doing the adult thing for a few years now. There has not been a single good president in my lifetime … we’re looking for an alternative.”

Anger over the union’s complicity is widespread. A veteran worker at the Stellantis Toledo Assembly Plant told the WSWS, “The union just doesn’t back the people. We had this ‘Stand Up’ strike [in 2023], and Jeep was one of the few plants that were called out. That was stupid. We should all have been out at the same time.

“The union gives in to the company so much. There’s never a 40-hour week. It’s like my life is Jeep. You can’t plan anything for your family. We’ve got more than 1,000 guys on layoff, and they don’t want to go back to three shifts. That’s why we’re working all these hours, and guys are getting hurt.

“When I first hired in there in the late 1990s the union was still strong. But, man, how things have changed.” He voted against the 2009 concessions, explaining, “I wasn’t going to give up anything.

“I pay $100 to the UAW every month,” he said. “I don’t call it union dues anymore. I call it medical insurance. That’s the way you have to look at it, because it’s gotten so bad, and it’s just going to get worse.”

He pointed to the vast VEBA (Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association) retiree healthcare trust as a source of corruption. “There’s enough in there to take care of great, great grandchildren.” He said second-tier workers, who do not get pensions and retiree healthcare, constitute more than half the workers at Stellantis. “When we workers with pensions die off, the UAW and the company are going to dip into that money for themselves. You follow the money, and you’re going to see the corruption. It’s billions and billions, and it’s going up every month.”

On the rank-and-file campaign of Will Lehman for UAW president in 2022, he said simply, “It was great, great, great. I voted for him because he was rank and file and was trying to get the people on the shop floors together. It’s hard but that’s what we have to do.”

The worker also expressed anger over Trump’s witch-hunting of immigrant workers and war threats against Venezuela. “I’m against them blowing up fishing boats and killing people. They don’t even know what cargo they had.”   

Hundreds of thousands of workers have viewed WSWS videos featuring Factory Zero workers, reflecting the depth of opposition. Online comments echo the same concerns. One worker wrote on Reddit, “GM is going to transfer the laid off workers to St. Louis or Texas and 90% will decline, resulting in being fired and disqualified from unemployment.”

Another asked, “Should we just call jobs in the automotive industry temp jobs from now on?”

Responding to a discussion of the UAW’s role, one worker explained, “Because the UAW and Shawn Fain supported Trump, and the reason this plant is closing is because Trump removed the EV tax credit essentially killing demand for EVs … and the UAW didn’t do anything to fight against those policies.”

The layoffs at Factory Zero are the predictable outcome of capitalist restructuring driven by investor demands, automation and profit maximization. Under capitalism, workers’ livelihoods are subordinated entirely to Wall Street.

The role of the UAW apparatus has been to facilitate this process. By refusing to mobilize the membership and by backing nationalist policies that divide workers by country and plant, the bureaucracy has functioned as an arm of corporate management.

What, then, should GM workers do to oppose the impending layoffs?

Asked this question Socialism AI, the new chatbox launched by the World Socialist Web Site, emphasized that workers cannot rely on appeals to management or the union leadership. The defense of jobs requires independent, democratic organization on the shop floor.

Rank-and-file committees, formed by trusted workers in every department and shift, must take control of the struggle, demand an immediate halt to layoffs, and fight for full pay and benefits for all affected workers.

Such committees would unify workers across plants and industries, prepare collective action—including strikes and mass protests—and link Factory Zero workers with autoworkers nationally and internationally through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC). Only by breaking from the nationalism promoted by the UAW apparatus and advancing an internationalist perspective can workers counter the global auto industry’s restructuring strategy.

The fight to defend jobs at Factory Zero raises fundamental political questions. It is not simply a dispute with one company but a confrontation with the capitalist system itself that sacrifices workers’ lives and livelihoods for private profit. The transformation of the auto industry—automation, EV production and technological change—must be placed under democratic workers’ control and reorganized to meet social needs, not the further enrichment of wealthy shareholders.

The impending layoffs at Factory Zero are a warning. They demonstrate that without independent organization and collective action workers will continue to pay the price for the capitalist crisis. The growing anger among autoworkers points to the possibility of a broader movement—one that links the defense of jobs to the fight for political independence of the working class and the reorganization of society on socialist foundations.

To get information about building a rank-and-file committee to fight the job cuts, fill out the form below.