LORDSTOWN, Ohio – On a Friday afternoon in May, three men sat chatting on folding chairs inside Lordstown’s local United Auto Workers hall. Normally, they’d be on their shift at the massive battery plant a few miles away. But they’d been out of work all year.
The factory — owned by General Motors and South Korea’s LG Energy Solution — announced last fall that work would stop in January because of slow electric-vehicle sales. Their joint venture, Ultium Cells, indefinitely let go about 480 employees, and told the remaining 850 factory workers they wouldn’t be needed for many months.
That announcement came a few weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans killed a $7,500 tax credit that was intended to jumpstart consumer demand for electric cars, sending U.S. EV sales tumbling. The layoffs were a sobering letdown after the burst of optimism when the factory opened four years ago, said Steve Baier, one of the workers passing time inside the union hall.
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