With GM Job Cuts, Youngstown Faces a New ‘Black Monday’

On Monday, General Motors announced that it would soon end production at its Lordstown plant in the Mahoning Valley just outside Youngstown, Ohio, putting 1,500 people out of work. That’s in addition to the 3,000 autoworkers who’ve been laid off from the plant, which makes the Chevy Cruze, since 2017.

The shutdown of the Lordstown complex, which has been churning out Vegas, Cavaliers, and other compact models for GM since 1966, is part of a company-wide wave of cost-cutting moves that involves idling five North American plants—including a massive Hamtranck facility whose construction in the 1980s displaced thousands of Detroit homeowners—and laying off 15 percent of the automaker’s salaried workforce, some 15,000 workers. In a statement announcing the shutdowns, GM cited “changing customer preferences in the U.S.” and the need to “take proactive steps to improve overall business performance.”