One of the most powerful labor unions in the United States is furious, as over 1,000 workers at General Motors’ leading Detroit factory are being pushed out to make room for dozens of new robots.
According to Crain’s Detroit Business, the lack of work coincides with the installation of 50 AI-integrated manufacturing robots, which GM installed in its Factory Zero plant, a major all-electric vehicle facility in Detroit. When the industrial robots went online, the UAW says the factory idled the thousand-odd workers, a situation in which employees aren’t allowed to work, but aren’t fully fired either (as Crain’s explains, the vast majority of these workers have functionally been laid off.)
“It’s always a concern when you see a robot coming to a plant, especially after they have laid off over a thousand people,” UAW local 22 president James Cotton told Crain’s. “They say it’s the wave of the future, and if that’s so, they’re taking away jobs from people.”
The 50 robo-arms — which GM euphemistically calls “cobots,” a style of robot designed to work alongside humans — are primarily being used to bolt body panels onto EVs, AutoBlog reported. Designed by the firm Fanuc, the cobots are built to operate at slower speeds, use less power, and contain more emergency-stop triggers than typical assembly-line robots.
