Ola Källenius
The Daimler CEO wants to save on personnel costs.
Munich, Frankfurt Sluggish sales, weak returns and miserable investors: management and works council have joined Daimler agreed on a massive job cuts. By the end of 2022, several thousand jobs worldwide will be canceled, the company said Friday.
While Daimler initially does not name an exact number, is in industrial circles of at least 10,000 places the speech. In Germany the dismantling should be socially acceptable, the German employees are protected by job guarantee until 2029 from operational redundancies. It should stay that way. Instead, Daimler does not want to fill vacancies with vacancies. For this purpose, partial retirement is to be extended and severance pay to employees in the administration in Germany.
Daimler also announced that it would be very restrictive to extend expiring contracts of temporary workers in the administration. The Group wants to use 40-hour contracts with similar savings in the future and thus save costs. In addition, the car maker wants to encourage employees to reduce their working hours themselves. The implementation of this cornerstone agreement will be decided in the coming weeks, said Daimler on Friday.
“With the cornerstones for streamlining the company, which have now been agreed together with the works council, we can achieve this goal by the end of 2022,” emphasized Chief Human Resources Officer Wilfried Porth in the statement. “We will make the measures as socially responsible as possible.”
According to the works council, the plan not to take over possible tariff increases in the metal and electrical industry in the coming year at Daimler is off the table. “Employees should not get their hands on their pockets,” said Deputy General Works Council Chairman Ergun Lümali. “We do not want to have a pure debate about minds – the focus of reducing staff costs must be on improving processes and processes.” The reduction of capacities should not lead to a performance increase.
Daimler CEO Ola Källenius, who runs the company since May 2019, is under massive pressure. The company had to reduce profit expectations several times over the past few months. Daimler suffers from the sluggish car economy, but also at home-made problems. Källenius had already announced in the middle of the month to save around EUR 1.4 billion in staff costs throughout the Group and to delete every tenth management position, but did not mention any details.
In addition to the diesel crisis, the car division Mercedes is struggling with manufacturing problems in important models. In addition, there are high investments in electromobility, which Mercedes now has to tackle in order to achieve the European Union’s climate goals. The van and truck business is also not going according to plan.
Only on Tuesday had Audi announced to reduce 9500 jobs in Germany in the coming years. BMW wants to keep its jobs constant, but cuts success premiums and dismantles temporary workers. The supplier groups Bosch and Conti have also announced massive austerity programs.
With agency material.