GM layoffs escalate auto industry’s global job-cutting campaign amid EV policy shift, tariff chaos

Jerry White

General Motors on Wednesday announced a new wave of job cuts at its US electric-vehicle and battery operations, part of a mounting assault on jobs throughout the American and global economy. This follows Tuesday’s announcements of more than 50,000 layoffs at Amazon, UPS and Paramount Global and increasing signs of an economic downturn even as the stock market continues to rise to record highs.

GM will reduce Detroit’s Factory Zero to a single shift in January 2026, eliminating about 1,200 jobs. It is pausing battery-cell output for six months at its Ultium plants in Warren, Ohio, and Spring Hill, Tennessee, affecting another 2,100 workers through temporary and indefinite layoffs. The company cited “slower near-term EV adoption” and the elimination of federal EV tax credits and easing of emissions rules, while taking a $1.6 billion charge tied to its revised EV strategy.

The cuts are already rippling through the supply chain. Dana Thermal Products (a subsidiary of Dana, Inc.) is permanently closing its Auburn Hills, Michigan, plant—opened to build EV battery cooling plates—destroying roughly 200 jobs amid “lower-than-expected EV volumes” from automaker customers. The closure, detailed in a WARN filings last week, is part of a broader wave of supplier contractions across Michigan and other states.

At Ford’s Rouge Electric Vehicle Center (REV-C) in Dearborn, UAW Local 600 officials told members on October 23 that all of the local’s workers at the site would be laid off indefinitely, a notice the local quickly rescinded even as Ford is evidently preparing further cuts. In March, Ford already eliminated 1,400 jobs—roughly two-thirds of the workforce—at REV-C, dropping operations to a single shift. Workers who were told they were the spearhead of a “new American manufacturing” now face layoffs, speed-ups and transfers.

GM’s reduction of Factory Zero, located in the Detroit enclave of Hamtramck, underscores a strategic pullback from the accelerated EV timelines shouted from corporate podiums just a year ago. The plant builds GM’s Chevrolet Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV pickups, alongside the Hummer and Escalade IQ. GM says output will fall by about 50 percent with the shift change.

A similar process is underway at GM’s Lake Orion Assembly north of Detroit. Originally slated for a $4 billion conversion to build the Silverado EV and Sierra EV pickups, GM has canceled the project after repeated delays and will now retool the facility for gas-powered Cadillac Escalade, Chevrolet Silverado LD and GMC Sierra LD production by 2027. Industry reports describe EV-assembly tooling being removed or repurposed for the new gas-powered models.

A young electrical worker who took part in the construction of the EV production lines at Lake Orion told the World Socialist Web Site, “I was part of the crew that built those lines, and then they had us tear them down. The waste of money and manpower is insane.”

Earlier this month, GM ended production of the BrightDrop electric delivery van at its CAMI plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, citing a slower-than-expected commercial EV market. The move could mean the closure of the factory, which has been idled since May 2025, and the loss of 1,200 workers’ jobs.

GM has also laid off 200 salaried workers at GM Tech Center in Warren, Michigan, and closed an information technology center in Georgia, eliminating about 300 jobs.

Other EV makers are also rolling back production. Rivian, which makes EV pickups, SUVs and delivery vans, said last week that it was laying off 600 workers. Volkswagen also plans to temporarily halt production of the ID.4 electric SUV this month at its factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The layoffs are not limited to the major automakers and their first-tier suppliers. In addition to the closing of the Dana Thermal Products plant, the Detroit Free Press reported International Automotive Components (IAC) Group is shutting two auto plastics plants in Mendon and Alma, Michigan, eliminating another 250 jobs. The UAW has issued no statement on the plant closures.

Industry analysts have repeatedly warned that Trump’s 25 percent auto and parts tariffs will mean layoffs and bankruptcies for many suppliers and higher new-car prices, with impacts cascading through lower-margin tiers. The Detroit Free Press is now reporting that “Detroit automakers face a possible semiconductor chip crisis due to a dispute between the Dutch government and a Chinese-owned chipmaker,” which “could put the brakes on much of their new car production.”

This follows a September fire at the Novelis aluminum sheet plant in Oswego, New York, a facility supplying roughly 40 percent of US auto-grade aluminum. This has become a major choke point, forcing temporary shutdown and production cutbacks at multiple automakers, which are unable to import aluminum due to massive tariffs.

As a result, Ford cut profit guidance, estimating a $1.5–$2.0 billion hit this year as F-150 production is curtailed; Stellantis idled its Warren Truck plant for weeks; analysts warn the supply disruption will linger into 2026.

According to Cox Automotive, third quarter US EV sales hit a record 438,000 and approximately 1.05 million year-to-date, driven by a rush to beat the deadline for the expiration of the $7,500 EV consumer tax credit. “October sales fell sharply after the credits expired, confirming industry warnings of a policy-induced slump,” the publication stated.  

In addition to the EV tax credits, the Biden administration provided billions in Department of Energy and other federal loans, grants and tax credits to the automakers and their joint venture partners to build electric battery plants, retool assembly lines for EV production, and secure and refine critical minerals needed for EV batteries. Biden also set a non-binding target for 50 percent of new US light-duty sales to be “zero-emission” by 2030, i.e.,  battery-electric, plug-in hybrid, or fuel-cell.

President Biden at the GM Factory Zero in Detroit-Hamtramck in 2021 [Photo by General Motors / CC BY-NC 3.0]

Biden’s EV subsidies and domestic-content rules were aimed not primarily at the environment, but at catching up with China’s overwhelming EV and battery lead and locking down strategic supply chains. This is needed not only for auto industry but the US military. Although it was widely acknowledged that the shift to EV production would lead to massive job losses, the United Auto Workers bureaucracy cheered this on as crucial for “national security,” saying its collaboration with the Biden administration to unionize battery plants and police low wages and sweatshop conditions was a “just transition to EVs.”

In his first day in office, Trump issued an Executive Order, titled, “Unleashing American Energy,” that not only encouraged the exploration and production of fossil fuels on federal lands and water, but eliminated the “electric vehicle mandate,” and terminated “state emissions waivers that function to limit sales of gasoline-power automobiles” and “unfair subsidies and other ill-conceived government-imposed market distortions that favor EVs over other technologies...”

As part of the One Big Beautiful Bill this summer, Trump ended $7,500 tax credits for new electric vehicle purchases on September 30, along with $4,000 for used models, seven years earlier than planned by the Biden administration.

In a backhanded acknowledgement of the domination of EV production by Chinese manufacturers like BYD, Trump has claimed a rapid EV shift would “hand the US auto industry to the Chinese.”

Auto executives and politicians around the world wave the “China threat” to demand layoffs and restructuring. Former Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares has warned that Chinese EV makers could overrun Europe within years and said only a handful of automakers would survive the “Darwinian struggle” to cut jobs and labor costs.

Whatever their differences on the pace of electrification, the class content of the policies of both capitalist parties in the US is the same: a nationally-based, protectionist program that keeps profits whole while offloading the crisis onto workers, and the expansion of the US military industrial complex to secure global supply chains and wage war against China.

The United Auto Workers is fully onboard and has offered its services to ramp up wartime production and enforce labor discipline. UAW President Shawn Fain—who lauded Biden’s EV policy as a worker-led transition—now fully backs Trump’s tariffs and hails the destruction of autoworker jobs in Canada and Mexico as a victory for American workers. The UAW apparatus was silent on GM’s layoffs Wednesday and instead boosted Trump’s trade war measures on its X platform, blaming plant closures and layoffs on the “free trade disaster.”

Protests sweep Cameroon after 92-year-old Paul Biya declared president again

Alejandro López

Mass protests have erupted across Cameroon after the Constitutional Council announced that Paul Biya, the world’s oldest head of state at ninety-two years and in power since 1982, has secured yet another presidential term. His new seven-year mandate would keep him in office until 2032, when he would be 99 years old.

The Court, dominated by the regime’s supporters, ratified an election denounced as fraudulent, provoking mass social opposition. In cities across the country, demonstrators have poured into the streets to denounce the electoral farce. Reports of intimidation, ballot-stuffing, and suppression were rampant. Opposition candidates have been barred from standing. Official figures show that registered voters were about 7,845,622 and turnout was 57 percent. In the Anglophone regions of the country, known by the English-speaking separatists as Ambazonia, voter turnout was among the lowest in the country according to reports, as separatists enforced an election boycott.

US Secretary of State John Kerry greets President Biya, 2014 [Photo: U.S. Department of State]

The official outcome claims that Biya won with 53.7 percent of the vote, ahead of Tchiroma Bakary with 35.2 percent. The other eight candidates each received less than one percent of the vote. Bakary quickly denounced the announcement of Biya’s win, telling French news agency AFP that “there was no election; it was rather a masquerade. We won unequivocally”.

Authorities say at least four people have been gunned down by security forces. The deaths happened on Sunday in Douala, the economic capital, as hundreds of people took to the streets in several cities including Garoua and Maroua. “I am ready to stake my life to defend my vote. I voted for Tchiroma because I want change,” Oumarou Bouba, a 27-year-old trader in Maroua, said to RFI.

Max Ndongmo, an inhabitant of Douala, told AfricaNews, “I was crushed when I heard the news about the results, it just crushed me. I will be honest with you, it was so shocking to me that I almost broke my TV. What they are doing and have been doing is just hypocrisy. To this government, I want to say, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but you need to stop.”

Protesters run as security forces use water cannons to disperse them during clashes in Garoua, Cameroon, October. 12, 2025 [AP Photo/Welba Yamo Pascal]

The political crisis could fuel the kind of Gen Z mass protests that have erupted in Madagascar, Morocco, Mozambique, Angola and Kenya against soaring food prices, inequality, mass youth unemployment and corruption from the parasitical elite.

For millions, Biya’s “victory” is the continuation of a nightmare that began in 1982, when he first assumed power, before most Cameroonians were born. His installation in power followed the defeat of the international upsurge of working class struggles in the period 1968-75 which allowed the bourgeoisie in both the imperialist centres and the colonial world to stabilise its rule and launch a global offensive against the working class. Keynesian national economic regulations and import substitution policies were replaced with pro-business monetarist policies.

Facing an economic collapse in the late 1980s, Biya’s government imposed International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programmes that slashed public spending by nearly a fifth, froze wages, and dismantled large parts of the state sector. Public enterprises that once provided employment and basic services were sold off at knock-down prices, beginning in the 1990s and accelerating in the early 2000s, when key utilities such as the national electricity company SONEL were privatised. These measures, deepened unemployment, rural impoverishment, and social decay.

The most recent International Monetary Fund programmes, renewed in 2017 and extended through the current 2025 framework, continue austerity, “rationalisation” of state-owned firms, and cuts to public investment. The result has been the systematic transfer of wealth from the Cameroonian masses to international creditors and domestic elites.

The political crisis is set to intersect with the two major insurgencies. One is the decade-long insurgency in the Anglophone west by bourgeois separatists. The second is in the Far North, where Islamist Boko Haram has carried out attacks. In both cases, the state has responded with brutal force. The English-speaking regions, once promised autonomy within a federal structure, have been subjected to collective punishment and economic strangulation. Entire towns have been razed, thousands killed, and hundreds of thousands displaced.

Underlying this crisis is the deep social misery produced by decades of capitalist underdevelopment. Cameroon is a social powder keg. Real unemployment and underemployment reach nearly 40 percent, forcing millions into precarious informal work and bare survival. At least 23 percent of the population live on less than US $2.15 a day, and when deprivation in education, health and living conditions are included, the share rises to more than 40 percent. The rural masses face the worst conditions, with over 56 percent counted among the poor in contrast to around 21 percent in urban areas.

On the other end, the rot at the top has become almost surreal. Biya, at 92, spends most of his time in the luxury Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva—with bills for him and his entourage estimated at around $65 million—or discreet locations around the Swiss lakeside city, from where he rules by decree through his proxies. The real machinery of power is handled by a narrow inner circle around the presidency, led by the flamboyant First Lady Chantal Biya and Secretary-General Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, who was granted sweeping presidential authority in 2019.

Cameroon possesses vast natural wealth. Offshore oil and gas fields along the Gulf of Guinea provide a major share of export revenues, while the country’s fertile lands yield cocoa, coffee, bananas, cotton, and palm oil for global markets. Its dense forests supply tropical hardwoods, and beneath the soil lie rich deposits of bauxite, iron ore, cobalt, gold, and diamonds. Hydroelectric rivers, notably the Sanaga and Lom, give Cameroon immense energy potential.

Control over these resources lies in the hands of a few multinational giants that throw crumbs at Biya and his entourage. In the oil and gas sector, French conglomerate TotalEnergies and Anglo-British firms like Perenco and Victoria Oil & Gas dominate, working closely with the state-owned SNH under opaque contracts. Timber exploitation is led by companies such as Rougier, Wijma, and Chinese logging groups that have devastated large parts of the southern rainforest. In mining, the Sundance Resources project at Mbalam-Nabeba and the Camalco bauxite venture reflect growing Australian and Chinese interests, while Canadian companies have stakes in gold and cobalt extraction. The agricultural export trade is monopolised by agribusiness multinationals like Société des Plantations du Haut-Penja, controlled by the French group Compagnie Fruitière, which dominates the banana industry, alongside a handful of European cocoa traders. These firms extract enormous profits through cheap labour, tax exemptions, and repatriated earnings.

Douala seaport in Cameroon [Photo by Johnkekam / CC BY-SA 4.0]

The state survives through repression and imperialist support. Biya’s regime has long relied on French imperialism, which continues to dominate the economy, the CFA franc currency, and the commanding heights of finance and trade.

In recent years Washington has moved aggressively to expand its influence, viewing the aged autocrat as a convenient instrument for securing US strategic interests in Central Africa and the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea. Under the banner of “stability” and “security cooperation,” Washington has deepened military and intelligence ties with Yaoundé, deploying advisers and carrying out joint operations against Anglophone separatist leaders both inside Cameroon and abroad.

In September 2024, when Biya travelled to Switzerland for medical treatment, his security was coordinated by American advisers. In recent months, the new AFRICOM commander, Dagvin Anderson, has met Biya, Defence Minister Joseph Beti Assomo, and the leadership of the Rapid Intervention Battalion, signaling a renewed military partnership.

The electoral farce has exposed the emptiness of the capitalist opposition. Figures like Issa Tchiroma, seventy-nine years old, parade themselves as alternatives but are products of the same rotten system. Tchiroma’s career has unfolded entirely within the structures of Biya’s regime. A former minister of transport under Biya in the early 1990s, he later served as minister of communication and government spokesperson from 2009 to 2019, loyally defending the dictatorship’s every abuse.

Tchiroma’s campaign rhetoric against “corruption” and “bad governance” recycles the fake moralism of a privileged bureaucrat. He represents a section of the ruling class seeking to reshuffle the spoils and a negotiated truce with Anglophone elites that would integrate them into the existing system of plunder.

The crisis in Cameroon is the latest example of the failure of bourgeois nationalists in the former colonial countries. Forty years of Biya’s rule have shown that the national bourgeoisie cannot resolve the fundamental problems of the country. They cannot develop the economy in the interests of the masses, end imperialist domination or unify the working people across ethnic and linguistic lines. Every attempt at reform has collapsed into corruption, and every opposition movement that bases itself on capitalist property relations becomes, sooner or later, a tool of imperialism or of one or another faction of the elite.

The masses are ready to fight. Workers, students, and unemployed youth have taken to the streets in defiance of curfews, police repression, and internet shutdowns. But spontaneous revolt, without organisation and programme, risks exhaustion or defeat. The regime will attempt to crush dissent, while imperialism and its local allies will seek to channel the movement into negotiations, commissions, or another “transitional” trap.

Pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson knowingly selling carcinogenic talcum powder prompts UK’s biggest class action

Margot Miller

For decades, pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson sold its popular talcum powder in the US, Canada, the UK, India and globally as an antidote to skin irritation or nappy rash after bathing.

Johnson’s baby powder, with its distinctive aroma redolent of cleanliness and purity, was used by adults as well as children. Mothers sprinkled it liberally on their babies, not knowing that the cloud of white dust could harbour a deadly carcinogen.

Talcum powder on black construction paper for contrast [Photo by Mattman723-Self-photographed / CC BY-SA 3.0]

Johnson and Johnson (J&J) knew this but sought to cover up the fact that their product was contaminated with asbestos and was allegedly killing its customers, declare the claimants in the legal case.

Three thousand people in the UK are now taking a class action against the multinational on the grounds that they knowingly sold tainted baby powder, which they charge was responsible for either their own cancers or that of relatives. It is the biggest action of its kind in British legal history.

The legal suit in the UK mirrors that pursued against the company in the US, where juries have awarded plaintiffs billions of dollars in compensation. One claimant with terminal mesothelioma in Connecticut was recently awarded $25 million, though this is under appeal.

The UK claim rests on internal company documents and scientific reports, brought by KP Law against J&J and its subsidiary Kenvue Ltd. The companies are denying the claim. However, during court proceedings internal documents were presented revealing that J&J were aware since the 1960s that their product contained asbestos fibres and took measures to conceal this.

Talc or talcum is composed of hydrated magnesium silicate, mined in many countries including Brazil, India, China, the US, France, South Korea and Finland. It is used in cosmetic products like lipsticks, eyeshadow and face make-up. It is also used extensively in industry in the production of plant food, paint, cement and disinfectants.

A block of talc [Photo: This image is a work of the "Minerals in Your World" project, a cooperative effort between the United States Geological Survey and the Mineral Information Institute]

The problem with this mineral is that it is frequently found in the same location as asbestos, also used widely in industrial products, and in building materials for its fire-retardant properties. Asbestos is a scientifically proven carcinogen when its tiny needle-like fibres are inhaled, leading to fatal mesothelioma or lung cancer as well as asbestosis.

A 1973 internal memorandum admitted the occasional presence of small amounts of actinolite or tremolite (types of asbestos) in the mineral talc, which was the main ingredient of J&J’s baby powder. It states, “Our baby powder contains talc fragments classifiable as fibre. Occasionally sub-trace quantities of tremolite or actinolite are identifiable (optical microscope) and these might be classified as asbestos fibre.”

Company officials toyed with the idea of patenting a technique to remove asbestos from talcum powder but decided otherwise as this would expose their knowledge that talc was contaminated with asbestos fibres. One executive stated, “We may wish to keep the whole thing confidential rather than allow it to be published in patent form and thus let the whole world know.”

The BBC reported that they spoke to J&J subsidiary Kenvue—formerly its Consumer Healthcare division. A Kenvue spokesperson explained that they were unable to find a method to decontaminate the talc. There followed decades of coverup at the expense of the health of talcum powder users.

Rather than alerting the relevant government bodies and withdrawing the product, J&J embarked on an aggressive marketing campaign to increase sales in the 1970s and 1980s, emphasising its purity and gentleness, even for new-born babies.

The product was not withdrawn until 2020 in the US and Canada and 2023 worldwide. J&J still sell baby powder, using a cornstarch substitute for talc.

Many claimants in the UK link their diagnoses of mesothelioma, lung cancer, ovarian cancer and other malignancies with prolonged use of Johnson’s baby powder.

Siobhan Ryan, 63, told the BBC, “My mother used it, and I used it. It smelt nice and was soft and lovely. When my babies were born, I used it on them. I thought I was doing my best for them.” Siobhan was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer, which after endless rounds of treatment was declared inoperable.

Also cited in the UK legal claim are documents showing that from the 1970s J&J lobbied the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to accept a less stringent test for the existence of asbestos fibres of 1 percent contamination. It seems the FDA accepted their assertion that a more sensitive test was unnecessary.

A former J&J toxicology director Dr. Steve Mann admitted in a deposition testimony to court that he made assertions as to the safety of the product without examining test data and failed to report asbestos findings in positive test results he did receive.

The number of those affected by the prolonged use of J&J’s baby powder probably far exceeds the number of claimants in the current litigation. Scientific studies have yet to establish how many. An unknown number of workers who mined the talc would have also succumbed to the deadly effects of asbestos.

Studies show that talc miners have a higher incidence of asbestos related diseases than the general public. In New York, for example, the incidence of mesothelioma in talc miners is five times the rate in the surrounding population.

J&J have piled up the profits at the expense of the misery and suffering of its customers. For 2024, earnings were reported at $14.07 billion, with revenue of $88.82 for the year. According to Forbes, profits for 2025 have reached $21.8 billion. It comes in at number 45 in the ranking of largest US companies on the 2024 Fortune 500 list.

The US-based company was founded in 1886, and mass production of the talcum powder began soon after. It expanded into a pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical technologies corporation, with a global workforce today of 138,000.

Johnson & Johnson Headquarters in New Brunswick, New Jersey, seen 1/2006 by Henry N. Cobb from the Pei Company, built 1983 [Photo: ekem]

J&J has faced many lawsuits, relating to hip replacement failures, the opioid crisis and transvaginal mesh. It tried to hide the existence of asbestos in its baby powder because the carcinogenic nature of asbestos had been irrefutably proved and is generally known about. Yet next to nothing is being done to rid this substance from the wider environment.

Though banned in the UK in 1999, asbestos remains in situ and as buildings deteriorate thousands in schools, hospitals and other public buildings are exposed to its invisible but deadly fibres. Governments, Conservative and Labour, have ignored the need to implement a removal plan at an estimated cost of £11.6 billion.

According to the Airtight On Asbestos Campaign, the number of annual asbestos related deaths amounts to 20,412, charging that the government Health and Safety Executive (HSE) vastly underestimate the figure, putting it at 5,000 deaths a year. For example, the HSE does not record the deaths associated with asbestos of those over the age of 75.

Asbestos related diseases have a long incubation period, between 15-40 years. An article in the Guardian by freelance journalist Tom White explains that Helen Bone was diagnosed with mesothelioma three years ago. She could have contracted the disease while at school, or college, or the two hospitals where she was employed. White notes her comment to the Northern Echo in 2022, that “You always think of asbestos as a disease from decades ago—affecting men who worked in heavy industry—so to be diagnosed in my 30s is shocking.”

Helen died last November aged just 38.

The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, following a European Commission decision, favours in situ management rather than removal. This policy has been disastrous. White cites the report of the National Organisation of Asbestos Consultants and the Asbestos Testing and Consultancy Association that found in a recent audit of 128,761 buildings that “78 percent had asbestos… 71 percent of the asbestos items were damaged… 30 percent were in the highest risk category.”

The policy of the trade unions is for the complete removal of asbestos, but they have done nothing to mobilize their members to achieve this beyond appeals to successive governments that are dedicated to defending the wealth of the rich.