Jeep Cherokees line a parking lot outside the FCA Belvidere Assembly Plant, where the vehicle is produced, in 2018.
Sales of the Jeep Cherokee, a midsize sport utility vehicle, have been slowed by the shortage of computer chips that has hindered auto production around the world for the last two years. Several times Stellantis has halted Cherokee production to divert the chips it had to larger, more profitable vehicles such as the Grand Cherokee and trucks like the Ram pickup.
“It’s been affecting us,” he said. “You don’t have that second and third shift coming by anymore. Most of the workers live here in Belvidere. It’s going to be a ghost town.” “It’s tough,” she said. Keeping plants operating at full capacity “has been hard while companies have to put out a lot of money for the shift to EVs.”
Eric Fulton, a 25-year employee who works in the plant’s paint reprocess department, said many Belvidere workers had been through downsizing in the past. The Detroit automakers have idled plants before past contract negotiations, only to reopen them after bargaining with the union. In 2019, GM was winding down production at its Hamtramck plant in Detroit as contract talks began, and ended up agreeing to produce the first of its new generation of electric vehicles there.In those same talks, however, GM closed its plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and resisted the union’s efforts to reopen it.
Failure of illinois and our response to the demoncrats recession. Moving to mexico probably.