Plant to Retool and Produce Chevy Bolt EV
After more than two decades, the General Motors’ Fairfax Assembly Plant in Kansas City, Kansas will cease production of the Chevy Malibu in November. The vehicle has been produced at the plant since 2003. The 2025 model year will be produced before the vehicle is presumably retired.
This news is significant in a number of ways for union members in the Kansas City-metro area. Members of skilled trades and construction unions, Teamsters, and the close to two thousand workers at Fairfax that make up UAW Local 31 will all see impacts from this news in various ways, some with increased work as part of the retooling and some with temporary lay-offs.
The Fairfax Assembly Plant also builds the Cadillac XT4. The production of this vehicle will pause in January and resume after the retooling, sometime in late 2025.
Employees will also receive some form of support while laid off due to language within the UAW’s collective bargaining agreement.
The retooling of the Fairfax Assembly Plant represents a roughly $391 million investment in the plant, something that was explicitly spelled out in the most recent UAW contract.
The new Chevy Bolt and the new Cadillac XT4 will be produced on the new Ultium battery platform. The Chevy Bolt, formerly produced in GM’s Orion Plant in Lake Orion, Michigan, ceased production in 2023.
The new version of the Chevy Bolt hopes to regain some of the initial fan-fare that it had when it first came out in 2016 to rave reviews. A series of callbacks damaged this, but it seems likely to rebound and to be a solid product placement for the Fairfax Plant that will lead to years of work down the road for UAW Local 31.
Tristin Amezcua-Hogan is the Editor of The Labor Beacon and a member of LIUNA Local 264. Tristin also serves as the Director of Communications for the Greater Kansas City AFL-CIO and the Chair of the Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance.
Tristin grew up as the son of a UA Local 669 member in Tecumseh, KS and the great-nephew of George C. Amis, longtime leader of the United Rubberworkers (now USW Local 307) in Kansas. Growing up in rural Kansas as the child of teen parents, Tristin quickly came to appreciate the life-changing benefit of a union job.
Tristin and his partner, Rebeca Amezcua-Hogan, are residents of the Westside, Kansas City, MO's historic Mexican neighborhood. They are proud members of Kansas City's New Reform Temple.
