“In addition to the 1,400 jobs (announced last month) we’ve now announced
600 more, so now it’s in total 2,000 jobs,” Volvo Trucks spokesman Tommy Kohle told AFP.
He said there would now be a total of 520 permanent job cuts in Volvo’s cab factory in the northern Swedish town of Umeå and 860 in the southwestern town of Gothenburg.
In Belgium, a total of 600 temporary contracts would be discontinued, he said.
“The problem is that since we made (the September 30) announcement, the development in the world economy has continued as you know to go the wrong way.
“The effect is that many customers now want to wait and see how things develop,” Kohle said.
“We still know that there is an underlying transport need … Society will go on. They will use the trucks they have, but we expect that they will wait for the financial turmoil to stabilize before putting in any new orders,” he said, adding “we need to adjust our capacity to this situation.”