The Munich commercial vehicle manufacturer MAN is canceling Germany Thousands of jobs. A spokesman for the group spoke on Thursday of 2,300 jobs, with the lion’s share of the cuts occurring in Munich, where 1,300 jobs alone will be lost in the next ten years. The plants in Salzgitter and Nuremberg are also affected.
This means that fewer jobs were lost than employees retired during the period, the spokesman explained. MAN must adapt to the persistently weak commercial vehicle market in Germany and further improve its cost position, said the spokesman. “We are now entering a high investment phase and need to generate sustained profits in order to expand our product portfolio.”
At the same time, one billion euros will be invested in the German locations over the next five years, said the spokesman. However, production for the “Traton Modular System” should take place in Eastern Europe, said CFO Inka Koljonen in an interview published on the intranet. This is a uniform platform for products across the entire group.
IG Metall fears even greater job cuts
IG Metall was angry in a reaction on Thursday. The union expects that the job cuts could be significantly greater. In Munich, up to 2,000 jobs are at risk, in Salzgitter up to 600 and in Nuremberg up to 500. The Munich MAN general works council chairwoman Karina Schnur spoke of a “slap in the face to the people who here in Munich put their full effort into their MAN every day.”
The employees are particularly critical of management’s decision to relocate body production for the next generation of trucks from Munich to Krakow, Poland. In the long term, the board also plans to relocate the entire cab interior and paint shop from Munich to Krakow as well as several indirect projects to Krakow. This is happening “contrary to previous promises,” explained IG Metall.
“In the long term, these plans by the group endanger the existence of the main Munich plant. The current decisions mark the prospective departure of MAN Truck & Bus from Germany,” says Sibylle Wankel, first representative of IG Metall Munich. “If in the future all parts for a truck are manufactured in Poland and transported from there to Munich only for assembly, it is obvious that assembly in Munich will also be available at some point,” fears Wankel.
MAN is part of the Traton Group, in which Volkswagen holds the majority. Volkswagen took over MAN in 2011 and subsequently covered the truck manufacturer’s losses several times. Things have been going better at MAN recently, with returns of over 7 percent in each of the past two years. “We are talking about a successful company here,” said Bavarian IG Metall boss Horst Ott on Thursday. MAN is not a case of restructuring, which is why the board’s decisions are “incomprehensible and not economically necessary.”
Are strikes imminent?
The company said it was faced with high electricity and labor costs as well as increasing pressure from competitors, including from China. “We don’t want to get into a downward spiral again,” said CFO Koljonen, explaining the planned “MAN 2030+” future plan, which has not yet been finally decided. The truck manufacturer is assuming permanently lower transport volumes and “thus also lower truck sales than previously expected”.
Ott doesn’t want to accept that and criticized MAN CEO Alexander Vlaskamp (54) in particular sharply several times on Thursday. The board does not “stick to promises from valid future contracts”. Instead, the company grabs funding for research and development in Germany “and then collects EU subsidies for relocations to Poland,” complained Ott.
The works council and union are aware that wage costs in Poland are lower and working hours are longer there. “That’s why we made offers,” said Wankel. For example, the Munich employees are prepared to forgo special payments, to suspend the tariff increase due in 2027 for several years and to work unpaid for up to two hours a week longer. “But we don’t see any willingness from the company to respond to employee contributions,” said works council leader Schnur.
More on the topic
Schnur continued that no further discussions between the board of directors and employee representatives have been scheduled at the moment. Horst Ott emphasized that the plans would by no means simply be accepted. If there are no constructive discussions, the situation risks escalating. “As IG Metall, we have a toolbox for such escalations,” Ott warned the board. The head of IG Metall Bayern left it open whether he meant warning strikes, for example.