As a “milestone”, MAN Truck & Bus will be celebrating the new collective agreement on Tuesday. It’s a hard-won compromise. The top management, works council and IG Metall negotiated six and a half months. The board wanted to cut 9,500 jobs in Germany. In the Munich main plant alone, which also includes the branches in Karlsfeld and Dachau, 3,000 jobs were at stake. The collective agreement now assures the employees that there will be no redundancies at least until the end of 2026, unless IG Metall agrees.
Nevertheless, jobs will be cut by the end of 2022. Germany-wide a total of 3500, so it was already in the key issues paper at the end of January. According to company spokesman Manuel Hiermeyer, it should be around 1600 in Munich. However, both the employee and the employer must agree to a termination agreement. Attractive change opportunities within the VW Group and partial retirement agreements are also to be offered. “All personnel measures are socially compatible and give employees new perspectives on a voluntary basis,” says Labor Director and Board Member Martin Rabe. The aim is to only have around 7,500 permanent employees in the main plant at the end of the day.
“We are at the beginning of a new chapter, a new MAN,” says CEO Andreas Tostmann. Because with the collective agreement the way is now clear for a realignment of MAN. The focus is now on CO₂-free driving. According to Hiermeyer, by 2030 the company has set itself the goal of equipping 60 percent of distribution trucks with alternative types of drive, primarily electric motors. The focus is on urban traffic, because there are already enough charging options here. In addition, the range of the batteries is 200 to 250 kilometers per day. For long-distance traffic, however, one still has to see how technology and infrastructure develop, according to Hiermeyer. The collective agreement now stipulates that electromobility is making its way into Munich – at least significantly more than before. The drive technology is developed and produced in Nuremberg, but the integration of the electric motors into the overall vehicle, as well as the drive and battery control, will in future be done in Munich. In addition, this will be the center of MAN development. The focus is on autonomous driving and digital services. The latter is about vehicle-related services. Freight forwarders are often under pressure. It’s more and more about efficiency, explains Hiermeyer. MAN wants to help with apps for freight and route planning as well as order processing. “These are the big trends that turn the industry upside down and decide whether the commercial vehicle manufacturer of today will still be successful in the market tomorrow,” said the spokesman. But you need money for that.
“We were able to agree measures with the employees that contribute to an improvement in earnings of up to 1.7 billion euros in total,” announced Tostmann. This means, on the one hand, savings in material and personnel costs, as well as in cooperation with the suppliers in terms of material costs. In addition, the CEO expects sales increases of around 450 million euros in the future through the expansion of the portfolio. “Now we’re going to shift up a gear,” he says.
In order to reposition itself, the Munich location also has to give up. For example, part of the truck production and the cab equipment will be relocated to Krakow, where heavy trucks have already been manufactured. The testing of coaches and their operational development will in future be done in Ankara, where the coaches are also produced. Parts and Logistics, which is mainly located in Dachau and was originally intended to be outsourced, remains, however.
Hiermeyer explains that they wanted to have clear profiles for each location. Munich is the competence center for overall vehicle development and global corporate headquarters, but also the main production site for trucks. That is why part of the production and development of light and medium-sized trucks will be relocated from Steyr to Munich. Because they want to sell the Austrian plant to an investor in order to secure employment. “They are trying to prevent it from being closed,” said Hiermeyer.
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