Ford's Volvo Cars unit which is being prepared for sale by the American automaker, has completed talks with its union representatives. Altogether, 2,721 employees in Sweden will leave the company of which, 2,367 are blue collar workers and 354 white collar workers. An additional 680 employees abroad will leave the company while 1,215 temporary contracts have been terminated. The total number of job cuts -4,616 workers worldwide- is less than the 6,000 layoffs that Volvo had originally announced in early-October.The Swedish automaker said that it was achieved through a series of cost-cutting measures such as renegotiations of contracts, reducing purchased services, savings in IT, telephony, travel and new routines in the procurement process.
"Today is of course a very sad day at Volvo, but I feel satisfied with the fact that our cost reduction program has been successful and it has enabled us to stay with a lower number of redundancies", said Stephen Odell, President and CEO of Volvo Car Corporation.
