The factory needs to cut the number of tyres it produces because of falling sales in Europe and North America.

Personnel manager Ian Peart said today the latest cutback had been unforeseen as little as two weeks ago, and would amount to a “major reduction” in the 23,000 or so tyres made daily in Dundee.

The cuts come only a fortnight after the manufacturing line at the plant closed down for a week to “adjust” tyre stocks, and at a sensitive time in the run up to Christmas.

“We’ve announced a further reduction in output from the plant as a result of increasingly adverse market conditions,” he said.

“The cuts we’ve announced were not foreseen at the time of the previous cuts, so it’s a developing situation.

“In light of the additional cutback that’s required we are asking the workforce to take up to three days off at half pay.”

Staff will be asked to volunteer to take 24 hours off during a period of around 10 days at the end of the month.

Workers had feared that compulsory pay cuts, shortened hours or even redundancies might be on the cards.

But Mr Peart told the Tele that the firm wanted to keep its staff together and that he did not foresee any job losses “at this time”.

“We’re trying to take a balanced approach to the problem to protect the factory,” he said

“The market will come back and with that we will return to full running, but in the meantime we need to concentrate on running the factory as efficiently as we can.

“The situation is very uncertain at present and the company has to manage its stock levels carefully.

“All tyre manufacturers are facing this problem, which comes from a downturn in the vehicle industry.

“When will it stop? It’s not possible to answer that question because the UK is about to slip into recession.”

Mr Peart said the slowdown would affect everyone in the factory, from management right through to machine operators.

Dave Brady, senior shop steward for Unite at Michelin, said, “They are asking people to volunteer — they have a choice to do this or not.

“It is important people are left to make a choice. It is obviously bad but it is happening across the world at the moment. The car industry is grinding to a halt and we are facing the same problems as everyone else.

“We just want to get our heads down and get through this.”

Mr Peart added that the company had taken other steps to slow production, including retraining staff, using flexible contracts and asking workers to bank time for 2009.

Workers have also undertaken maintenance projects around the plant.