Stellantis — the big worldwide automotive conglomerate that owns all the things from Jeep to Ram to Alfa Romeo and Opel — has canceled its plans for CES 2024, we’re advised via a short press release. The corporate blames the present United Auto Staff (UAW) strikes, which at the moment expanded to include 6,800 workers at the factory that makes Ram 1500 trucks, which is the biggest Stellantis manufacturing unit in america. Stellantis has “the worst proposal on the desk relating to wage development, short-term employee pay and conversion to full-time, cost-of-living changes (COLA), and extra,” the UAW stated in a statement to Axios.
“As the prices of the continuing UAW strikes in opposition to Stellantis proceed to mount, the Firm has determined to cancel its deliberate show and displays at CES 2024,” Stellantis says in its press launch, saying that it “is executing complete countermeasures to mitigate monetary impacts and protect capital.”
CES cubicles and journey bills for the military of individuals to workers them for per week in Las Vegas can actually run into the thousands and thousands of {dollars}, nevertheless it’s unclear if that may make up for the loss from stopped manufacturing — or if Stellantis simply discovered an opportunistic motive to keep away from CES, which has largely devolved right into a calorie-free competition of vaporware and buzzwords.
Don’t fear, although, the identical press launch guarantees (threatens?) that Stellantis “will proceed to reveal its transformation right into a mobility tech firm by way of different means.” We are going to remind you that Stellantis has chosen to run a forked model of Android for its infotainment stack and has introduced issues like a drone that launches out of a Jeep Wrangler and an EV Dodge Charger with an “exhaust system” that’s simply speakers playing exhaust sounds.
On second thought, this firm was an ideal match for CES.
The UAW strikes are historic even within the complicated labor historical past of the American automotive business — employees in any respect three of the key US carmakers are on strike over elementary points like compensation and advantages in addition to challenges novel to the EV transition, like battery manufacturing and whether or not new EV factories shall be covered by existing labor contracts. We’ve reached out to Ford and GM to see if their CES plans stay intact.