Lion Electric layoffs hit Joliet again

Lion Electric on Wednesday announced 300 layoffs with the job cuts reaching into the company’s new Joliet plant.

It’s not clear how many workers are left in Joliet where employment has been dwindling despite promises of hundreds of jobs when operations began in 2022.

The Canada-based manufacturer of electric buses and trucks did not specify the impact on the local plant but said the 30% reduction in its workforce includes operations in the U.S., where Joliet is its only factory.

“We do not provide a breakdown of these layoffs by establishment and cannot comment on the exact number of layoffs in Joliet,” said Marie-Ève Labranche, Lion Electric spokeswoman.

Labranche said although Lion Electric plan to “optimize the use of the company’s facility” in Joliet by potentially “subleasing a significant portion,” the company will keep the “necessary footprint to maintain its production capacity of 2,500 school buses per year at the Joliet plant.”

“In other words, production is currently maintained at Joliet,” Labranche said.

The cuts in Joliet are “a significant amount of the workforce,” said Chris Tucker, an organizer with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. The union has been trying to organize the Joliet plant, which began operations in 2022.

The Machinists on Wednesday were trying to determine how many were laid off at the local plant.

“There’s not many people left in there to my knowledge,” Tucker said. “We only had about 100 people working on the shop floor before now.”

Lion Electric has had at least three rounds of layoffs since opening the Joliet plant with fanfare. Management had forecasted 1,400 workers by the fourth year of production.

Tucker said management began calling Joliet workers at home Tuesday night to inform them of the layoffs and told others as they showed up for work Wednesday.

The layoffs, described as “mostly temporary” were publicly announced in Lion Electric’s second quarter report released Wednesday.

The company described an action plan to streamline operations and adjust costs to current demand.

“Transition to electric is taking longer than initially expected, but transportation electrification is here to stay,” Lion CEO and Founder Marc Bedard said in the quarterly report.

In July 2023, Bedard was in Joliet and joined by Gov. JB Pritzker, U.S. Sens. Richard Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, Mayor Terry D’Arcy and other elected officials, both local and state, to celebrate a ribbon-cutting at a plant viewed as a bright sign for the future of the Illinois economy.

The state of Illinois provided $7.9 million in tax incentives to Lion Electric based on its potential of bringing 747 jobs to the plant within three years of starting production. Company management soon began telling local officials, however, that they were confident that hundreds of more jobs were coming to Joliet.

Instead, the company has been cutting jobs before hitting the 200 mark.

In April, Lion announced it was laying off 120 workers companywide. At that time, Tucker said about 150 production workers were employed in Joliet.

Companywide layoffs in November took away 11 jobs in Joliet.

Wednesday’s layoffs have been the “biggest blow” yet, Tucker said.

In the second quarter of 2024, Lion delivered 101 vehicles to market, down 199 vehicles in the same quarter a year ago, according to the quarterly report.

The company had a net loss of $19.3 million for the quarter. In the same quarter a year ago, the net loss was $11.8 million.