French carmaker Renault detailed a job-cut plan last night to help it meet profit targets after recently scrapping an ambitious sales volume growth goal in the face of a market slowdown.
The company said it would cut 6,000 jobs through voluntary redundancies, of which 4,900 will be in France and 1,100 in other European countries.
Hardest hit will be the Sandouville plant in western France, which makes the key top-line Laguna model whose sales have fallen short of expectations, where one thousand people will be laid off.
The CGT union, one of the largest in France with a history going back to the communist-led domination of the biggest factory of the then state-owned firm, called a one-day strike tomorrow to protest at the cuts.
The central works council of the world's ninth-biggest auto group by sales met at the company's Boulogne-Billancourt headquarters to hear the details. Renault employs around 134,000.
A few blocks away from the works council meeting, and from the former main plant on an island in the Seine river, Renault said its commercial staff was making internal presentations of the new Megane model that will be unveiled at the Paris Auto Show in October.