SEAT Employees Choose Salary Freeze in Exchange for Audi Q3

The economic recession pushes automakers and people involved in the automotive sector way beyond their limits, especially when talking about the salary freezes and job cuts applied at production plants around the world. The newest example comes straight from Volkswagen Group's Spanish brand SEAT which asked its workers to accept a two-year salary freeze in return for building the new Audi Q3.

In other words, SEAT's employees had to choose between two options: either they accepted the pay freeze and started the production of the new Audi Q3, which means no job loses, or approximately 1,500 workers had to leave the company (this means about 20 percent of the total workforce at the Martorell factory could be laid off).

"Sixty five percent of the workers have accepted the proposal," Autonews writes today quoting an union source close to the matter.

Moreover, SEAT isn't yet sure that the new Audi Q3 is gonna be produce at its Spanish production facility as Volkswagen hasn't announced an official decision at this point.

Overall, SEAT is one of the Volkswagen brands that were affected the most by the economic recession, with sales across Europe falling dramatically in the last months of 2008.

According to the aforementioned source, SEAT recorded a 78 million euro operating loss last year compared to an 8 million euro profit the year before, while sales fell 14.6 percent to 368,100 in 2008. New car sales in Spain fell as well to 1.16 million or by 28 percent.

SEAT currently has a single production plant in Spain in Martorell, near Barcelona, with the total workforce numbering 14,500 employees.