PSA confirms plan to drop Sochaux plant night shift

PARIS/RENNES (Reuters) - France's biggest carmaker, PSA Peugeot Citroen (PEUP.PA), confirmed on Wednesday it plans to scrap the night shift at its French Sochaux plant from the beginning of February.

Carmakers worldwide are battling falling sales and temporarily shutting plants and cutting jobs in an attempt to reduce stocks of unsold vehicles. French car sales fell 15.8 percent in December.

A PSA spokesman confirmed the company would present plans to drop the Sochaux night shift team -- which works on the Peugeot 308 medium-sized model --, one of four teams at the site at an extraordinary works council meeting to be held on Friday.

"We are still in a crisis situation that we must face up to," the spokesman said. "2009 is going to be difficult."

He said the company's plan was to launch a new team to work on the Peugeot 3008 small MPV model at the end of the first half of 2009, leaving the site with two teams working on each car.

Workers on fixed-term contracts would be trained to join the new team, while temporary workers would not have their contracts renewed, but no employees would be laid off, he said.

The spokesman confirmed that an extraordinary works council meeting would also be held on Friday at the company's Rennes site. No details of the agenda were available, he said.

Union official Pierre Contesse told Reuters that the "adaptation of production volumes for February" was on the meeting's agenda.

Contesse said workers were expecting to be told that the plant would be idled for more days in January.