AUBURN HILLS, Mich.—When white-collar employees at Jeep parent Stellantis were ordered back to the company’s North American headquarters five days a week, they faced challenges familiar to many in the return-to-office era.
Working with new colleagues face-to-face, in some cases for the first time. Dodging workplace viruses. Figuring out child-care arrangements.
What they likely didn’t count on: getting a parking ticket from their employer because their car wasn’t made by Stellantis.
Multiple employees have said online that Stellantis security issued them a ticket for parking their vehicles in the wrong spot.
“Where do we park if we have non Stellantis vehicle?” one posted on a Stellantis-dedicated Reddit page. The answer: Not anywhere you’d like.
The crackdown has reignited the debate over a longstanding practice in Detroit, where automakers have encouraged employees to spend their paychecks on company-made vehicles—with preferential parking as a perk.
Stellantis parking scofflaws today don’t receive a fine and are typically let off with a warning, employees say. But if tickets pile up, violators risk getting their vehicles booted by security, leaving them the shame of having to ask a manager to call and get their tires released.
A Stellantis spokeswoman said preferred parking is reserved for company-branded vehicles. “Employees must adhere to posted signage and communications,” she said.
The results can be confusing and, at times, amusing. At least one online user said they were ticketed for parking an Eagle Talon sports car in a Stellantis lot, despite Eagle being a long-defunct nameplate from Chrysler, which too is now owned by Stellantis.
“Seems the security needs a little history lesson,” they wrote. The worker didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Stellantis said that given the company’s long history and broad portfolio of legacy brands, older vehicles may be misidentified by company security.
“Stellantis is reviewing its processes to help prevent such situations in the future,” the company said. “Employees are encouraged to contact Corporate Security if they believe a parking warning has been issued in error so it can be reviewed and addressed promptly.”
It’s difficult to determine whether ticketing has increased since Stellantis imposed its return-to-office order. But the decades-old concept is rooted in the idea of encouraging carmaker employees to buy what they build.
At Stellantis’s headquarters, driving a company vehicle gives workers an appreciable edge, said Al Amici, a former executive who worked at the campus when the company was known as Fiat Chrysler.
Several thousand people compete for spots in the lots and decks that encircle the headquarters. Depending on where you end up parking, the walk to the office can be as long as 20-30 minutes, Amici said. Tack on another 15-20 minutes to get to your desk, and the motivation for nabbing a closer spot starts to make sense.
“There’s a strong motivation to park as close to the facility as you can, especially in inclement weather,” Amici said.
Crosstown rivals General Motors and Ford Motor aren’t exempt from the debate over competitive parking policies. Two decades ago, Ford workers at a Dearborn factory who didn’t drive Fords were banned from parking in a lot adjacent to the facility, according to reports at the time. The policy spread to other factories, and is common at auto plants around the country to this day. In 2021, security at a GM plant ticketed a Tesla owner for parking a “foreign” car in a domestic lot, despite it being made in the U.S.
GM declined to comment. A Ford spokesman said the company doesn’t designate parking spots for company and competitor vehicles at its corporate facilities.
Steve Lehto, a consumer-protection lawyer in Michigan, said a company issuing citations to enforce a parking policy is legal. Even so, Lehto noted that workers may not take kindly to a competitor’s car being parked in a spot earmarked for a company vehicle.
“If you park a foreign car in the lot, bad things might happen to it,” he said. “Not a ticket—just bad things.”
Police in Auburn Hills, where Stellantis’s headquarters is located, said they don’t enforce parking regulations on the campus unless someone parks in a handicap space or a fire lane. They haven’t received complaints related to any internal enforcement actions, said Deputy Police Chief Scott McGraw.
“We are also not aware of any other Auburn Hills-based employers implementing similar brand‐specific parking requirements,” he said.
Amici, the former exec, said he understands the motivation for encouraging employees to drive what they design and build. Stellantis tries to take the edge off for workers hoofing it from outer perimeter lots, shuttling them in from some locations.
“They’re trying to strike a balance,” he said of the company.
The outer perimeter parking lots seemed orderly when a Wall Street Journal reporter recently visited. A pair of Subaru and Hyundai crossovers were parked in spots dedicated for Stellantis vehicles. No tickets were seen on their front windows.
Still, enforcement can be strict.
Stellantis workers heading in and out of the campus said tickets can be spotted on a near-daily basis. Bigger parking decks are often a focal point of the action, they said.
One worker simply shrugged when asked about the policy. People should know where to park, they said, noting the company recently hung new signs to emphasize which spots were designated for which vehicles.
Another long-tenured employee walking through Lot 11 laughed when asked about the parking policy. Several years ago, when headquarters was virtually empty thanks to the pandemic-era remote-work policy, he took a gamble parking in a spot at the end of a row dedicated for Stellantis vehicles.
“There was barely anybody there,” he said.
He got a ticket anyway.
Write to Ryan Felton at ryan.felton@wsj.com