Nissan is going to furlough around 10,000 workers from its U.S. factories in Mississippi and Tennessee, which remain closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The news were confirmed to CNN by Lloryn Love-Carter, a Nissan spokeswoman, who said that they will furlough around 10,000 employees from their plants in Canton, Mississippi and in Smyrna and Decherd, Tennessee.
The Japanese automaker is asking furloughed employees to apply for unemployment through at least April 27, when Nissan is planning to restart production. The company’s US factories remain closed since March 20.
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Nissan’s initial decision to re-open its factories on April 6 has been pushed down to the end of April, responding to the virus outbreak.
Nikkei reports that the Japanese company is also planning to lay off most of its 6,000 employees at its UK plant in Sunderland and around 3,000 employees at its Spanish plant in Barcelona.
Honda did the same with more than half of its U.S. staff after suspending production at its local factories on March 23. The Japanese carmaker will stop paying them from April 13 to May 1, making the furloughed workers eligible to receive unemployment benefits, Honda spokesman Teruhiko Tatebe said to Bloomberg. Honda said that production at the affected factories will resume on May 4, if of course all goes according to plan.
The US market is facing a dramatic drop in sales of new vehicles and automakers are trying to deal with the economic repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has also extended the shutdown of its US and Canadian factories until May 4, while Toyota did the same for its facilities through April 17.
