General Motors will be shutting down its IT Innovation Center situated in Chandler, Arizona, leading to the elimination of 940 positions. The closure of this facility, as reported by ChandlerNews.com, has taken the local community by surprise. The center’s operations will cease on October 31, as indicated by KTVK-TV. Micah Miranda, the director of economic development, expressed astonishment at GM’s unexpected decision to close the Arizona IT Innovation Center.
“We’ve recently been working with their local team about higher education partnerships, mentoring, and a promotional video highlighting Chandler’s Price Corridor. With this unfortunate news, we plan to work closely with our workforce development partners to assist with employment opportunities for those impacted,” Miranda stated.
According to Erik Gronseth, employees were informed on Tuesday evening about a staff meeting scheduled for 9 a.m. the following day.
“There wasn’t too much of any forewarning of what to expect. Some of us jokingly thought maybe this was going to be along the lines of ‘meet some new coworkers,’ but it’s unfortunate that it turned out the way it did.”
Gronseth is part of a limited group of employees who are not facing job cuts.
“That was a bit of relief, bittersweet relief, as we knew a lot of people,” Gronseth commented.
This mixture of conflicting emotions is occurring during a period of considerable economic upheaval. Numerous strong critics of President Joe Biden have promptly attributed a significant portion of these economic challenges to his administration.
Discussing challenges, the job reductions in Arizona follow General Motors’ prior elimination of approximately 200 engineering positions in other locations, as reported by the Detroit Free Press.
The decision to close was communicated through a company-wide email by GM.
“Today we announced the difficult decision to cease IDT (information and digital technology) operations at the Arizona IT Innovation Center at the end of October. This decision was not an easy one, but it will help to optimize our innovation center footprint and gain the efficiencies and effectiveness we need to have to continue to support the company,” Stacy Lynett, Vice President of Information and Digital Technology at GM remarked.
