PSA To Start Le Grande Firing
PSA Peugeot Citroen is planning an Opel-sized thinning of its French workforce, Reuters says, citing comments of Jean-Pierre Mercier, union representative at Peugeot’s factory in the Paris suburb of Seine-Saint Denis. The union claims that PSA wants cut 5,000 jobs. And guess who’s to blame?
Left Party presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon says credit ratings agencies are behind the decision. Moody’s had recently lowered Peugeot’s credit rating to negative.
“The result: even though the company’s profits rose 18 percent in the first half of 2011, the owner throws thousands of workers into the streets to ‘reassure the markets’,” said Melenchon.
Occuper la Bourse de Paris !
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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Short Paris fire insurance stock.
Yah, the PSA mooks prolly have MBAs from US colleges. Sheesh, any moron can boost the bottom line by cutting head count. Not to worry about long term affects
A recent TTAC article indicated that Peugeot sold less than 2000 cars per month in Germany, in the US the tally is zero, who in his/her right mind would even consider a French car? French know how to make scarves and cheese, mechanically they subcontract to zee Germans No wonder they are trying to cut down their lazy workers
One interesting point is that job cuts will very strongly affect white-collars. R&D in France will be cut in half (2100 positions suppressed). The word is out (in serious papers) that these jobs will now be relocated in China and Brazil. This is very annoying because we're talking of the greyest matter going overseas. And what's left to us expensive westerners if not our brains?