Nissan to cut 20,000 jobs worldwide
February 9, 2009 by Alborz Fallah
Joining a growing list of manufacturers cutting costs and subsequently staff, Nissan has just announced it will cut 20,000 jobs worldwide, or about 8.5% of its global workforce.
The Japanese giant blames the sharp fall in sales and the glooming world economy as the reason. Nissan expects to lose about 265bn yen ($4.3bn) in the current financial year.
Once the saviour of Nissan and a national hero in Japan, chief executive Carlos Ghosn publicly stated the the firm’s “worst assumptions on the state of the global economy have been met or exceeded. The global auto industry is in turmoil. Nissan is no exception.”
The 20,000 jobs are expected to go between March 2009 and March 2010, this will leave Nissan with 215,000 staff from 235,000. There is no confirmation as to which plants will be affected, although as reported last month Nissan Australia has already cut 50 jobs. The company is also planing to cut working hours for ongoing staff.
The news comes amid an 18.6% sales decline for the brand during October-December last year. As a result, Nissan lost 83.2bn yen ($1.37 billion), compared with a 132.2bn ($2.17 billion) profit a year earlier.
Apart from the 20,000 workers set to lose their income, Nissan is expected to suffer a credibility dint in its home country.
So far this year the majority of car companies have taken steps in reducing staff and output as the doom-gloom sales decline becomes a reality.
Print it: 
The Big H from South Korea should open up a school and name it “How To Run A Successful Car Company” and all the car makers can be shown what to do.Even in boom times they seem to struggle to make profit.Well one car company seems to know what there doing.
Unfortunately news like this is becoming far to common. Allot of re structuring going on. Traditionally after every economic slow down we have a fast increase, what are these company’s going to do when they have to hire good people quickly.
lets hope the first bloke who got the chop was the chief stylist…
Ha Ha Garry, don’t get too wrapped up in the belief that H is doing it right, they are currently just going for numbers. I mean really, why heavily discount your ‘09 complianced stock on TV when your dealers still have ‘08 stock on the lot????
Salesman, this will be going on for a bit longer yet. They won’t be re-hiring in a hurry as they are simply getting rid of a lot of overstaffing problems.