General Motors is cutting a full operation shift at the Orion Township plant in America that builds the Chevrolet Sonic made famous in the Transformers movie series. The move lays off about 500 workers, but most of them are expected to get offers to transfer to other factories. The move came just a day after General Motors announced that they are adding 1200 more staff to the Detroit-Hamtramck plant.
GM has been working hard all this year at the Orion Township factory to align production of the Sonic and their Verano with their demand. GM first attempted idling the factories several times and eventually resorted to laying off about 100 staff. It also reduced the production rate there.
With the huge rise in popularity of SUVs and Crossovers, demand for the plant’s small cars is on the downturn. Chevrolet overall sales is down 35.2% from January to September this year and the same can been seen at their Malaysian and ASEAN operations with slow sales.
