Car market crash in December and negative forecasts cut 4,000 jobs

The decline in car sales led to 4,335 layoffs announced in January in the car industry, a sector, which had created 220,000 jobs over the last 15 years. According to data centralised by Ziarul Financiar, in January nine out of the fifteen top auto components manufacturers with plants in Romania announced collective redundancies accounting for 10% of the overall employees in the nine plants. The first signs foreshadowing redundancies in the sector appeared in early December, when Dacia announced it had halted production for the fourth time, while carmakers such as Renault, BMW, Audi and Daimler suspended operations at some of their European plants for one to five weeks. Car manufacturers in Western European countries are of vital importance to Romanian producers because they account for the bulk of orders. After Audi and BMW cut production in Hungary and Germany, Draxlmaier, the largest employer in the Romanian auto industry announced it would lay off 800 staff starting in January, after in November it had cut another 1,000 jobs at the Codlea plant in Brasov. Internationally, Austria-based EYBL, a manufacturer of car seat covers, announced bankruptcy in 2008, because of a significant reduction in operations, saying it will lay off 1,000 people in three stages in Romania, out of the current 1,750 employees in its two plants in Timisoara.