PSA Cuts More Jobs In France, Dacia Expands In Morocco
Peugeot is deepening job cuts at its French factories, with another 1,500 positions set to be made redundant as part of a massive cost-cutting effort. Meanwhile, rival automaker Renault is expanding its operations in Morocco as its Dacia brand continues to steamroll through the European market.
While Peugeot had previously announced that 8,000 jobs were set to go on the chopping block, another 1,500 jobs will be eliminated via attrition. Meanwhile, Dacia’s Moroccan facility is looking to double its capacity next year to 350,000 units, and will expand the plant’s export base. Currently, Europe eats up almost all of the Lodgy minivans and Dokker commercial vans produced by the plant, but markets like Turkey and the Middle East are set to be thrown into the mix.
PSA’s job cuts have been extremely controversial in France, and are rife with geopolitical implications. Legions of North African immigrants from former French colonies came to France to work in PSA plants. Now, their jobs are being shipped back to the continent, with Renault planning to hire 3,000 workers to staff the Moroccan Dacia plant.
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"Now, their jobs are being shipped back to the continent, with Renault planning to hire 3,000 workers to staff the Moroccan Dacia plant." Unfortunately for France, these future-unemployed largely belong to ethnic groups that are the most alienated from traditional French culture. They would at least have decent-paying jobs with nice benefits to make the alienation tolerable. But the combination of unemployed and alienated people make for a potentially explosive situation. We could see a repeat of the Paris banlieue riots of years back.
No good answers. Over the next 20 to 30 years as we see Western Europe, Japan and the United States turn gray and their standard of livings collectively decline, more and more of these jobs are going to go away. As other developing nations develop, auto manufacturing will move closer to the centers where the buyers are.