A Warren auto parts warehouse and logistics facility that serves Stellantis plans to cut 352 jobs next month, adding to a growing number of Michiganders filing into the unemployment line.

Dennis Glackin, president of labor relations for Universal Logistics Holdings, Inc., on Dec. 18 notified the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity its affiliate Logistics Insights Corp. plans to permanently close its facility on Georgia Street in Detroit.

“As a consequence, the Company will commence layoffs on February 18^th, 2025,” Glackin wrote in a notice of closing. “At that time, the Company expects to eliminate 352 positions at the Georgia St. facility.”

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The required notification detailed those who will be let go: 134 warehouse workers, 204 dock employees, and 14 clerical workers.

“Bumping rights do not exist at this facility governed by the collective bargaining agreement between the Company and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 299,” the notice read. “The Company will honor transfer rights in conjunction with the terms and condition of the current CBA.”

The decision to close up shop follows claims by local union President Kevin Moore last year that Stellantis was moving to a non-union operator to save on costs at the warehouse that supplies parts for its Jeep assembly plants, Crain’s Detroit Business reports.

“(Stellantis) wants to take the cost out of their tier one suppliers because they just went through a contract,” Moore told Crain’s last year. “If they’re going to bring in non-union people, we’re going to go after them. We’re not going backwards after coming out of inflation and the pandemic.”

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Messages left by the Detroit Free Press with Stellantis, Logistics Insights, and union officials went unanswered.

The layoffs follow others at The Big Three and affiliated auto suppliers in recent months tied to the public’s resistance to the government forced transition to EVs.

Along with Logistics Insights, Samsung SDI America plans to lay off 179 workers from its EV battery headquarters in Auburn Hills in February, as well.

The company previously secured taxpayer funds in 2018 to open its EV battery pack plant and headquarters in Auburn Hills it claimed would create 461 jobs by the end of 2024.

General Motors in November announced its second round of layoffs impacting 1,000 workers, mostly at its Global Tech Center in Warren, just three months after the carmaker cut 1,000 in August.

In late October, Ford idled its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, putting about 800 out of work amid what CEO Jim Farley described as a “slow uptake of EVs.”

The Rouge Electric Vehicle Center produces the Ford F-150 Lightning, and the layoffs there followed a 50% production cut in early 2024. The layoffs in Dearborn came after Ford in August scrapped plans for an EV manufacturing hub in Oakville, Ontario, to focus instead on gas-powered Super Duty trucks.

Stellantis offered buyouts to salaried workers over the summer, before laying off 1,100 in Warren in October due to declining sales, and another 400 in Detroit in November.

Those job losses and others are an “unmistakable sign the auto industry is slowing,” Patrick Anderson, CEO of Anderson Economic Group in East Lansing, recently told Bridge Michigan.

It’s obvious, he said, “consumers are expressing some reluctance about buying the higher-priced cars, notably electric cars.”

“Manufacturers are cutting back on their costs in anticipation of a further slowdown or even a recession,” he said.

It seems Democrats who lost their government trifecta in November anticipated the downturn, approving legislation during the recent lame duck session to boost unemployment insurance.

Under legislation signed into law by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer just before Christmas, Michigan’s unemployment coverage was expanded by six weeks to 26 weeks, with maximum weekly benefits going from $362 to $614 by 2027.

Those changes are expected to increase total pay outs from $763.1 million to between $1.3 to $1.4 billion, outstripping current unemployment insurance revenues, according to a legislative fiscal analysis.

State Rep. William Bruck, R-Erie, told MLive the “major cost increase” will be felt by employers across the state, exacerbating problems for many already struggling with increased costs in Whitmer’s Michigan.

“It is always important to remember that the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program is 100% employer funded,” Amanda Fisher, Michigan state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, concurred in comments to Michigan Advance. “And because of actions taken in 2011, including limiting duration of benefits, the UI Trust Fund was able to weather the pandemic, but was decimated in the process. Increasing benefits adds extra pressure to a system that has not yet recovered and would make weathering another economic downturn difficult.”

That downturn is likely already underway, with unemployment in Michigan increasing for the last eight consecutive months to 4.8% in November.

Since November 2023, Michigan’s labor force has lost about 10,000 participants, as the number of unemployed as swelled by 36,000, or 17.3%, according to the most recent data from the Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget.