Workers at Volkswagen's Spanish unit have started a 24-hour strike, stopping production at the company's Martorell plant in north-eastern Spain, a Seat spokesman said on Thursday.
"The production line has been stopped since 10 pm (2100 GMT) last night," the spokesman said. Unions called the strike after the company announced plans to cut 1,346 jobs, which is nearly 9 percent of its workforce.
The stoppage is expected to result in the loss of production of 1,800 cars, according to the company's provisional estimate.
Seat came up with the job reduction plan after the failure of negotiations with unions over changes to working practices, including cuts to the working day and wages.
The changes were designed to combat falling demand without resorting to job cuts.
Seat production will fall to about 390,000 units this year from 416,000 last year. The fall has been caused by lower demand and also by the company's strategy of launching more up-market, lower-volume models. Nine-month data showed Seat sales had dropped 5.3 percent to 271,000 units, while its market share in Europe dropped to 2.4 percent from 2.6 percent a year ago.
Comments
Comments are closed.