Renault Cutting Nearly 15,000 Jobs Worldwide to Save Costs

Almost 4,600 of those job cuts will be in France alone.

As production has dropped quite significantly during the pandemic, French carmaking company Renault has decided to cut 14,600 jobs worldwide in order to cut costs. 

Around 10% of those cuts will happen in the carmaker's home country, France, amounting to nearly 4,600 domestic job losses. Many of these will be voluntary retirement and retraining as per the company's statement.

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Worldwide cuts

Renault announced on Friday that its 180,000 global workforce will be suffering 14,600 job cuts, 10,000 of which will be happening outside of France, its base country. 

A drop in consumer demand and factory shutdowns due to the COVID-19 outbreak have made the company draw this decisive conclusion. 

The company had followed an aggressive two-decade expansion under Carlos Ghosn, who headed the alliance of Renault, Nissan Motor Co., and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. Now, Renault's Acting CEO Clotilde Delbos explained "We have spent and invested too much and will now come back to our base." Delbos added that the focus will take a turn towards profitability and away from increases in volume. 

The company is pushing to save over 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) over the coming three years, which will cost Renault around 1.2 billion euros to implement alone. 

There may be adjustments to capacity in its Russian plants, but Renault has yet to make any statements on the exact future of its six sites in France. Further talks around a number of scenarios which include phasing out car assembly in its Flins plant, where the Zoe model is built, and in Dieppe, where the Alpine 1100 sportscar is put together.