Honda moves to cut China workforce with voluntary layoffs

Honda is scaling down its full-time production workforce in China, with roughly 1,700 employees having agreed to leave thus far, the Japanese automaker said on Wednesday, as its car sales in the world’s biggest auto market decline.

GAC Honda Automobile, a joint venture between Honda and the Chinese state-owned automaker Guangzhou Automobile Group, told workers earlier this month it was seeking to make voluntary layoffs, a Honda spokesperson said.

Honda’s move marks the latest setback for Japan’s legacy car brands in China, where the growing dominance of local players such as BYD and a brutal price war are causing them to lose market share.

Chinese consumers are shifting away from internal combustion engine cars to electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, segments in which Japanese brands struggle to compete with local rivals.

The Honda venture’s roughly 1,700 workers who agreed to voluntarily retirement amount to 14% of its production staff, according to the spokesperson.

The venture is considering the number of workers for which it will accept voluntary retirement, the spokesperson said, adding the final figure may end up being different from the 1,700 workers who asked to leave so far.

Honda operates four factories in China through the venture, which traces its roots to the late 1990s, and three other factories through another joint venture with Dongfeng it set up in 2004.

Passenger vehicle sales in China, the world’s biggest auto market, fell 5.8% in April from a year earlier, according to data from the China Passenger Car Association, amid intensifying price competition and consumers’ caution about spending on big items during a shaky economic recovery.

FOLLOW US ON GOOGLE NEWS

Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! Todays Chronic is an automatic aggregator of the all world’s media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials, please contact us by email – todayschronic.com. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.

Leave a Comment