General Motors‘ Venezuelan subsidiary has sent out a message to nearly 2,700 personnel notifying them that they are no more employed by the automaker and had received severance pay in their bank accounts, as per 2 staff members.
A Venezuelan court recently ordered the seizure of the company’s Valencia plant, ruling in favor of 2 dealerships that had submitted a case in 2000 versus the subsidiary on grounds they had not abide the agreed sale of 10,000 vehicles.
Workers say that prior to the seizure was revealed, the automaker had been dismantling the plant, which has not produced a car since the beginning of 2016 because of scarcities of parts and strict currency controls in the OPEC country.
The seizure, which automaker called “illegal,” comes amid a deepening economic and social crisis in leftist-led Venezuela that has presently roiled lots of U.S. companies.
“All of us received a payment and a text message,” stated a worker who had worked for the company for more than a decade, adding that his corporate email account had been shut down over the weekend.
“Our former bosses informed us the executives left and we were all fired. There is no longer anybody in the nation,” added another staff member who got the exact same message on his personal cell phone and a payment to his account. He had been at the automaker for five years.
The automaker did not immediately respond to a request for remark about the layoffs or the employee accusations it had already been dismantling the plant.
GM stated recently that it was halting operations and laying off employees due to the “illegal judicial seizure” of its possessions.
