Chrysler, the US car manufacturer, has said it will suspend all but its most essential worldwide operations for two weeks in July, in an attempt to cut costs.
The company, the third-ranked auto manufacturer in the US, has suffered reported losses of $1.6 billion amid low sales in 2007.
Bob Nardelli, Chrysler's chief executive, said in an e-mail to workers that the move was needed to help it create "efficiency across organisational lines and boost productivity".
Earlier this year the company also offered to buy out 44,000 of their US workers' contracts.
John Miller, a professor of economics at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, told Al Jazeera the move to temporarily suspend operations was a sign the US economy has entered a recession.
Chrysler has been attempting to restructure since private investment firm Cerberus Capital Management bought almost 80 per cent of the company last year.
The US auto market has slumped by a wider margin than most analysts had anticipated last summer, with sales down 13 per cent in the first two months of this year.
Chrysler announced last week that it was shutting a design studio outside San Diego it had maintained since the early 1980s.
Industry closures
The move increases the auto industry's traditional manufacturing shutdowns in July.
Chrysler, General Motors and Ford typically close US plants in early July for vacations and shut individual manufacturing operations at various times to develop new tools when they make car and truck model changes.
Dan Flores, a General Motors spokesman, said the car maker planned to shut its US plants during the first two weeks of July this year as it has in the past.
Ford is also planning a similar two-week shutdown of its North American assembly plants in July, Angie Kozleski, a spokeswoman, said.