Peugeot Citroen Slovakia will lay off 190 workers

The biggest investor in the Trnava region, the automotive plant Peugeot Citroen Slovakia(PSA), will give layoff notices to 190 employees between March and December 2009 due to the shrinking sales of cars in the European market.
An additional reason for the layoffs is completion of the start up phase for production of a new model
Employees to get the layoff notes are people from the project team that worked on the production launch of the new Citroen C3. Because PSA is not planning to reduce their automobile output, these layoffs will not affect production workers.
The terminated workers will receive four or five months’ severance pay, depending on their years of service.
The factory will run in two full-time shifts this year, with about 3,000 employees producing a daily output of 850 vehicles. Despite the crisis affecting the entire automotive sector, the company is launching production of its new Citroen C3 Picasso model in its Trnava factory.
PSA is the first automotive plant in Slovakia to announce a mass layoff of employees.