22. September 2024
The big companies are starting a wave of layoffs. There are still vacancies. But anyone looking for work now has to be flexible and accept a pay cut.
The headlines are all similar: when it comes to the labor market and employment, thousands upon thousands are threatened with job loss, with the most they can expect is a social plan, short-time work, early retirement – or it is made clear that the position will not be filled again after the employee leaves. Colleagues will have to shoulder more, unless an entire department is dissolved or the plant is closed completely.
What sounds like a message from economic hell is everyday life for many who work for the big names in German industry: VW with at least 30,000 fewer jobs; the number may not be the end yet; Bosch, Continental, ZF Friedrichshafen with even greater percentage job cuts in Germany, BASF and Bayer with relocations and closures. According to the Initiative for a New Social Market Economy (INSM), Deutsche Bahn is also planning to cut 30,000 jobs, but the wave of outrage is yet to come. Tesla, Ford, Webasto: thousands of jobs at risk. In construction, savings are being made through short-time work, and the trend is going against the industry. SAP and Vodafone are two of the unpleasant bunch that are by no means part of the old iron industry. The people who are being eliminated are: from the assistant to second or third level management (and sometimes even the bosses, as at Thyssenkrupp Stahl), practically everyone whose area is not profitable. A company that cannot withstand competition, particularly from China and other foreign countries, due to the German cost burden, or whose product range is no longer realistic – either because time has passed, because management has made false assumptions, or because political guidelines cannot be implemented in the real world and the company management did not notice this in time.
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