Nissan offers buyouts to US workers, halts global pay rises, internal e-mails show
[TOKYO] Japan's Nissan has started offering buyouts to US workers and has suspended merit-based wage increases worldwide, internal e-mails reviewed by Reuters showed, as the automaker expands cost cuts amid weak performance in key markets.
CEO Ivan Espinosa announced a new round of cost cuts this month that include closing seven production sites globally and cutting 11,000 more jobs, taking its total planned workforce reduction to around 20,000.
As part of the cuts, Nissan has offered separation packages to workers at its Canton plant in Mississippi as well as to salaried workers in human resources, planning, information technology and finance, showed one email sent last week.
'While substantial efforts have been made in the US to help right-size Nissan, we need to take additional, limited, strategic action here at a local level,' Nissan Americas chairman Christian Meunier said in the email. The plan is 'crucial for Nissan's comeback,' he said.
Reuters could not determine how many people have been offered buyouts or how many have accepted.
A separate email reviewed by Reuters showed Japan's third-biggest automaker has also suspended merit-based pay increases globally for the current business year.
BT in your inbox
Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign Up
Sign Up
The automaker said in a statement that Nissan North America is offering a voluntary separation programme to a limited group of US salaried employees. It declined to give more details as the process is ongoing.
Cutting US workforce runs counter to President Donald Trump's aim of creating jobs and boosting domestic manufacturing through initiatives including a 25 per cent tariff on imported vehicles.
But Nissan's operating profit margin in North America including the US, its biggest market, worsened in the business year ended March, even as it sold more cars than a year earlier.
It offered buyouts to Canton workers after launching a job-cut plan in November and has now followed that up with another round.
Analysts attributed Nissan's troubles to factors including an ageing line-up, a lack of hybrid models in the US and excessive focus on increasing output under former top executive Carlos Ghosn whose near two-decade year tenure ended in 2018.
Separately, Nissan on Tuesday said it had paid 646 million yen (S$5.8 million) in compensation to former CEO Makoto Uchida and three other executive officers who left their positions at the end of March.
Nissan has yet to disclose a full list of production sites it plans to close. At home in Japan, Oppama and one other plant are under consideration, sources told Reuters this month.
Nissan has said it will consolidate Mexican and Argentinian pick-up truck production into a single Mexican site, and that Renault will buy its stake in their joint Indian business. It has also said it would close a Thai plant by June.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg News reported that Nissan is considering raising more than one trillion yen from debt and asset sales which would include a syndicated loan guaranteed by the UK government. REUTERS
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Straits Times
an hour ago
- Straits Times
Wave of anger could sweep liberals to victory in South Korea election
People vote during early voting for the upcoming presidential election at a polling station in Incheon, South Korea, on May 29. PHOTO: REUTERS Wave of anger could sweep liberals to victory in South Korea election JECHEON, South Korea - When then-President Yoon Suk Yeol's martial law decree plunged South Korea into chaos, it plummeted sales at Ms Park Myung-Ja's diner in Jechon and became a turning point for many voters in the town. The 66-year-old chef and restaurant owner is one face of South Korea's North Chungcheong Province, a swing region that has become even more pivotal at a time of deep political polarisation in Asia's fourth-largest economy. 'We need to get furthest away from all that martial law drama to get things back to where they were,' Ms Park said at her Korean restaurant two hours south of Seoul, adding liberal candidate 'Lee Jae-myung looks alright for that'. Voters are now looking for the winner of the June 3 snap election to calm the economic and political shocks that have roiled the country since Yoon's Dec 3, 2024, martial law decree led to months of economic downturn and sparked nationwide protests. Ms Park's Chungcheong Province is a key battleground for Mr Kim Moon-soo, candidate for the conservative People Power Party campaigning on deregulations for companies, and liberal Democratic Party frontrunner Lee, who's vowing to bring back stability after months of turmoil. In swing regions such as North Chungcheong Province, where Jechon is located, the ruling conservative party risks losing a big chunk of its vote base with many voters blaming the martial law debacle for weaker private consumption and easing export momentum. Ms Park's business crashed after Yoon's declaration with some of her biggest customers who are local council officials cancelling dinner reservations in groups of five to 10. 'The first call I got on Dec 4 was from a regular customer who does his year-end dinner here every year. I asked him why he is cancelling it, and he said - 'don't you watch news?'' Mr Lee, who defied Yoon's martial law decree, had a 10-percentage point lead over Kim in one of the final opinion polls issued on May 27 with 45 per cent of voters trusting him to revive the economy compared to 32 per cent for Mr Kim. Conservatives have criticised Mr Lee for a series of criminal cases he faces over accusations of election law violations, corruption, and other issues, but they have struggled to unify behind a single candidate and to distance themselves from Yoon. On May 30 , right-winger Kim said voting for Mr Lee would end up 'collapsing our economy', hoping to sway voters in small cities such as Jecheon, an inland town of about 130,000 surrounded by mountainous tourist spots, who are looking for a turning point to revive South Korea's fortunes. But the martial law call continues to weigh heavily on conservative chances. 'We definitely had fewer customers, especially from office dinners, after the martial law declaration. It did bite us hard,' said Choi , a Chinese restaurant owner in Pangyo, a town south of Seoul. 'Lee is someone who will uplift more of us who are not doing so well.' Heavy on spectacle Consumer sentiment, which dropped by the most since the outbreak of Covid-19 in December, recovered to pre-martial-law levels of 101.8 in May, on expectations of a fresh stimulus package under a new leader. The shock move rattled markets and put the won among the region's worst-performing currencies of 2024 , hurt business sentiment even before exporters absorbed the full force of US President Donald Trump's punitive tariff policies. Now, the strains are setting in, as economic tailwinds from the semiconductor boom and reforms in the capital markets in the past few years are fading. Whoever wins the June 3 election will face an economy that contracted in the first quarter, manage negotiations with Washington to avoid high tariffs, and assuage voters such as Ms Park who are seeing their living standards go backwards from elevated grocery bills and weak spending. South Korea's election campaign has been light on policy and heavy on spectacle after twists and turns involving the main candidates. 'I wish they had taken housing supply and boosting the domestic market more seriously in their pledges,' said 59-year-old Jung Soo-hyeon. 'But perhaps because it's a snap election, that kind of in-depth consideration seems to be missing — which is a bit disappointing.' Analysts say voters watched economic pledges closely as consumption has been badly hit. A win for Lee could spur 'faster economic growth in the short term,' Mr Kim Jin-wook of Citi Research said. The Democratic Party 'would likely be relatively more keen on providing policy and support for the mid-to-low-income bracket,' he added. While both top candidates have pledged to draft a second supplementary budget for the year as soon as the election is over, Mr Lee has also promised vouchers to help local businesses and subsidies for childcare, youth, and the elderly. While Mr Lee has backed away from advocating for universal basic income, some voters including Ms Park, who backed Yoon last time, said they see Mr Lee as most likely to look out for their interests. 'Lee's party seems to be willing to give out more to those who are struggling,' Ms Park said, emphasising that 'change' is important. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
an hour ago
- Straits Times
Job interviews enter a strange new world with AI that talks back
Even as AI handles more of the hiring process, most companies selling the technology still view it as a tool for gathering information, not making the final call. PHOTO: REUTERS NEW YORK - For better or worse, the next generation of job interviews has arrived: Employers are now rolling out artificial intelligence simulating live, two-way screener calls using synthetic voices. Start-ups like Apriora, HeyMilo AI and Ribbon all say they're seeing swift adoption of their software for conducting real-time AI interviews over video. Job candidates converse with an AI 'recruiter' that asks follow-up questions, probes key skills and delivers structured feedback to hiring managers. The idea is to make interviewing more efficient for companies – and more accessible for applicants – without requiring recruiters to be online around the clock. 'A year ago this idea seemed insane,' said Arsham Ghahramani, co-founder and chief executive officer of Ribbon, a Toronto-based AI recruiting start-up that recently raised US$8.2 million (S$10.6 million) in a funding round led by Radical Ventures. 'Now it's quite normalised.' Employers are drawn to the time savings, especially if they're hiring at high volume and running hundreds of interviews a day. And job candidates – especially those in industries like trucking and nursing, where schedules are often irregular – may appreciate the ability to interview at odd hours, even if a majority of Americans polled in 2024 by Consumer Reports said they were uncomfortable with the idea of algorithms grading their video interviews. At Propel Impact, a Canadian social impact investing nonprofit, a shift to AI screener interviews came about because of the need to scale up the hiring process. The organisation had traditionally relied on written applications and alumni-conducted interviews to assess candidates. But with plans to bring on more than 300 fellows this year, that approach quickly became unsustainable. At the same time, the rise of ChatGPT was diluting the value of written application materials. 'They were all the same,' said Cheralyn Chok, Propel's co-founder and executive director. 'Same syntax, same patterns.' Technology allowing AI to converse with job candidates on a screen has been in the works for years. But it wasn't until the public release of large language models like ChatGPT in late 2022 that developers began to imagine – and build – something more dynamic. Ribbon was founded in 2023 and began selling its offering the following year. Mr Ghahramani said the company signed nearly 400 customers in just eight months. HeyMilo and Apriora launched around the same time and also report fast growth, though each declined to share customer counts. Technical stumbles Even so, the rollout hasn't been glitch-free. A handful of clips circulating on TikTok show interview bots repeating phrases or misinterpreting simple answers. One widely shared example involved an AI interviewer created by Apriora repeatedly saying the phrase 'vertical bar pilates.' Aaron Wang, Apriora's co-founder and CEO, attributed the error to a voice model misreading the term 'Pilates.' He said the issue was fixed promptly and emphasized that such cases are rare. 'We're not going to get it right every single time,' he said. 'The incident rate is well under 0.001 per cent.' Braden Dennis, who has used chatbot technology to interview candidates for his AI-powered investment research start-up FinChat, noted that AI sometimes struggles when candidates ask specific follow-up questions. 'It is definitely a very one-sided conversation,' he said. 'Especially when the candidate asks questions about the role. Those can be tricky to field from the AI.' Start-ups providing the technology emphasized their approach to monitoring and support. HeyMilo maintains a 24/7 support team and automated alerts to detect issues like dropped connections or failed follow-ups. 'Technology can fail,' CEO Sabashan Ragavan said, 'but we've built systems to catch those corner cases.' Ribbon has a similar protocol. Any time a candidate clicks a support button, an alert is triggered that notifies the CEO. While the videos of glitches are a bad look for the sector, Mr Ghahramani said he sees the TikToks making fun of the tools as a sign the technology is entering the mainstream. Preparing job applicants Candidates applying to FinChat, which uses Ribbon for its screener interviews, are notified up front that they'll be speaking to an AI and that the team is aware it may feel impersonal. 'We let them know when we send them the link to complete it that we know it is a bit dystopian and takes the 'human' out of human resources,' Mr Dennis said. 'That part is not lost on us.' Still, he said, the asynchronous format helps widen the talent pool and ensures strong applicants aren't missed. 'We have had a few folks drop out of the running once I sent them the AI link,' Mr Dennis said. 'At the end of the day, we are an AI company as well, so if that is a strong deterrent then that's OK.' Propel Impact prepares candidates by communicating openly about its reasons for using AI in interviews, while hosting information sessions led by humans to maintain a sense of connection with candidates. 'As long as companies continue to offer human touch points along the way, these tools are going to be seen far more frequently,' Mr Chok said. Regulators have taken notice. While AI interview tools in theory promise transparency and fairness, they could soon face more scrutiny over how they score candidates – and whether they reinforce bias at scale. Illinois now requires companies to disclose whether AI is analysing interview videos and to get candidates' consent, and New York City mandates annual bias audits for any automated hiring tools used by local employers. Beyond screening calls Though AI interviewing technology is mainly being used for initial screenings, Ribbon's Mr Ghahramani said 15 per cent of the interviews on its platform now happen beyond the screening stage, up from just 1 per cent a few months ago. This suggests customers are using the technology in new ways. Some employers are experimenting with AI interviews in which they can collect compensation expectations or feedback on the interview process – potentially awkward conversations that some candidates, and hiring managers, may prefer to see delegated to a bot. In a few cases, AI interviews are being used for technical evaluations or even to replace second-round interviews with a human. 'You can actually compress stages,' said Mr Wang. 'That first AI conversation can cover everything from 'Are you authorized to work here?' to fairly technical, domain-specific questions.' Even as AI handles more of the hiring process, most companies selling the technology still view it as a tool for gathering information, not making the final call. 'We don't believe that AI should be making the hiring decision,' Mr Ragavan said. 'It should just collect data to support that decision.' BLOOMBERG Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
4 hours ago
- Straits Times
While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, June 2, 2025
Smoke rises above the area following what local authorities called a drone attack on a military unit in the Sredny settlement, Russia. PHOTO: REUTERS While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, June 2, 2025 Ukraine destroys $9 billion worth of Russian bombers in major ground assault Ukraine said June 1 it destroyed Russian bombers worth billions of dollars in a 'large-scale' drone assault on enemy soil as it geared up for talks with Moscow counterparts to explore prospects for a ceasefire. In a spectacular claim, Ukraine said it damaged US$7 billion (S$9 billion) worth of Russian aircraft parked at four airbases thousands of kilometres away, with unverified video footage showing the aircraft engulfed in flames and black smoke. A source in the Ukrainian security services said the drones were concealed in the ceilings of shipping containers which were opened up to release them for the assault. The long-planned operation came at a delicate moment three years into Russia's invasion. READ MORE HERE US asks Australia to increase defence spending to 3.5% of GDP US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth asked Australia to increase its defence spending to 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product during a meeting with Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles, the Pentagon said on June 1. The defence chiefs also discussed security issues including accelerating US defence capabilities in Australia, advancing defence industrial base cooperation and creating supply chain resilience, the Defence Department said in a statement. "On defence spending, Secretary Hegseth conveyed that Australia should increase its defence spending to 3.5 per cent of its GDP as soon as possible," the statement said. READ MORE HERE Iata flags policy shortcomings, even as more airlines pledge to use greener fuels More airlines around the world are committing to using greener jet fuel in a bid to reach their goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But there are headwinds, with the global trade body representing the industry flagging policy shortcomings that have hindered the production and adoption of such fuels. These are made mainly from waste materials like used cooking oil, and are said to reduce carbon emissions by up to 80 per cent compared with regular jet fuel. The International Air Transport Association (Iata) said on June 1 it expects the production of such greener aviation fuels to reach 2 million tonnes in 2025, a dip of 0.1 million tonnes from its earlier projections in December 2024. READ MORE HERE Poland's Nawrocki on course for tight presidential election win Conservative historian Karol Nawrocki appeared to edge ahead in June 1's presidential election in Poland, after a late exit poll overturned an early showing that gave a razor-thin victory to his rival, the liberal Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski. A late exit poll by Ipsos for broadcasters TVN, TVP and Polsat showed Mr Nawrocki at 50.7 per cent, and Mr Trzaskowski at 49.3 per cent. Earlier readings published just after voting ended had the eurosceptic nationalist at 49.7 per cent. The vote is seen as a test of the nation's support for a pro-European course versus Donald Trump-style nationalism. READ MORE HERE Macron condemns 'unacceptable' violence during PSG football celebrations French President Emmanuel Macron condemned June 1 'unacceptable' violence during celebrations following Paris Saint-Germain's Champions League final victory, as he welcomed the triumphant team to the Elysee palace. 'Nothing can justify what has happened in the last few hours, the violent clashes are unacceptable,' Macron said. 'We will pursue, we will punish, we will be relentless,' he added before congratulating the players on their win. READ MORE HERE Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
