Mitsubishi Cuts Will Include 230 Jobs in Cypress

Mitsubishi Motors Corp., Japan’s fourth-largest auto maker, said it is planning to cut about 1,000 jobs in the U.S., including 230 in California, as part of a companywide reorganization aimed at restoring profitability.

The maker of mid-size Galant sedans will eliminate about 700 jobs at its 4,200-employee manufacturing plant in Normal, Ill., and about 230 jobs from its 1,100-employee sales operation in Cypress, a spokesman said. The reductions amount to about 19% of Mitsubishi’s U.S. work force and will be accomplished by March 2001, mostly through attrition and transfers, he said.

In Japan, Mitsubishi will close a bus factory in Nagoya and a truck transmission plant in Tokyo, and move those operations to other plants, the Nihon Keizai newspaper said, without citing sources.

Mitsubishi Motors spokeswoman Nobuko Oonuma said some parts of the report are accurate, but declined to elaborate. The auto maker will announce its second reorganization plan of the year in Tokyo today.

Mitsubishi and other auto makers that rely on Asia for sales and profits are suffering as the region lingers in recession.

Mitsubishi President Katsuhiko Kawasoe last week would not confirm or deny a report in the Japan Industrial Daily that it will close its Oe factory in Nagoya in western Japan.

“We’re grappling with many things,” Kawasoe said. “I can’t say yes or no.”

The Mainichi newspaper reported that Mitsubishi by March 2000 will also shut some production lines at its Kyoto factory, which makes engines and transmissions, and at its Maruko truck-transmission plant in Tokyo.

Mitsubishi Motors will probably report today that earnings for the half-year ended Sept. 30 fell into the red as sales plunged in Japan and the rest of Asia.

Mitsubishi’s domestic production, sales and exports from Japan fell by double digits in the half-year compared with a year earlier, the largest declines among Japan’s five biggest auto makers.