Peugeot Citroen to cull more French jobs in wake of sales gloom

Bloomberg reports that Europe's second-largest carmaker, PSA Peugeot Citroen, will expand its workforce reduction plans by 1500 workers, following on from the group's earlier announcement to cut 8000 jobs. PSA’s decision to reduce its French automotive operations by 11,200 workers – 17 per cent of its workforce – to 55,900 employees over the next two years, comes as the European auto market drops to its lowest sales volume since 1995.

It’s been reported that Peugeot Citroen has been losing 200 million euros ($241 million) a month during 2012.

As part of July’s announced plan, the first French car manufacturing plant to close in 20 years, the Aulnay plant near Paris, will cease production in 2014 combing its workload with the company’s Poissy plant – also running under capacity – with a plant in Rennes also affected by the job cuts.

In April PSA Peugeot Citroen sold up its 48-year-old Parisian headquarters in an effort to aid the company’s debt woes, and in October news broke that only six months after the all-new Peugeot 208 was launched, its production would be scaled back.

Only last month, talks were stalled between the French conglomerate and its alliance partner General Motors on the potential of combining brands with GM’s European brand Opel as the French group accepted government assistance for its financial difficulties.