Nissan workers are expected to demonstrate against Spanish job cuts on Labour Day (1 May) and during the 11-19 Barcelona auto show, local media reports said.

The automaker will cut 600 jobs in two plants in Catalonia after not reaching a deal with unions involved, catalannews.com reported.

Four meetings with workers' representatives had failed and this "forced" management to announce the layoffs.

Nissan had signaled its plans late in March but had hoped to reach a restructuring agreement by last Friday.

Nissan's Europe chief Gianluca Ficchy said in March the 600 job losses would be covered by early retirements and voluntary and 'incentivised' redundancies.

Unions wanted remaining jobs to be guaranteed in the long term.

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Nissan will select 600 people to sack and a the future of a planned EUR70m new paint shop is now uncertain, the report said.

With about 3,200 people working at the two plants in the Barcelona region, the layoff would mean axing about 20%.

According to just-auto's PLDB database (and factory finder), Nissan's Barcelona plant, capacity 120,000 units, builds the Navara and Frontier trucks and their Mercedes X-class clone plus the NV200 van line including electric and taxi variants.

The automaker also has an engine plant with capacity for 150,000 motors plus a gearbox factory (40,000).

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