Detroit, a city on the Neckar “https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/SWR Aktuell” SWR

The car maker Daimler wants to cut more than 15,000 jobs and suggests the possibility of redundancies despite the employment guarantee, which will exclude layoffs by 2029. Bosch and other suppliers have also announced the loss of many thousands of jobs. The reasons are the near end of the petrol engine and slump in sales due to the Corona crisis.

Until recently, working at “Bosch” or “Daimler” meant a life position. Also for the children and children’s children. This job guarantee is history with the year 2020. In the middle Neckar region, one of the richest regions in Germany, the so-called structural change is in full swing. A branch has to reinvent itself or it goes under.

Today the internet buries thousands of bank branches

In economic history, this is a completely normal process. At the end of the 1950s, mining collapse began in western Germany. Many thousands of farms disappeared in the 1970s. After that, the computer replaced printing presses and many other analog technologies. Today the internet buries thousands of bank branches.

I wonder if the factories of Daimler and Bosch will one day be symbols of an extinct industry like mining towers and waste dumps. Even if Daimler builds electric cars in the future and Bosch supplies parts, fewer workers will be needed than today. And unlike a mine, a factory can also be located elsewhere. In Brandenburg, for example, where Tesla is building its new factory, or in China, the largest sales market for cars.

No longer relying on Daimler and Co.

In the companies in and around Stuttgart the fear of a “Detroit on the Neckar” is avoided. A decline, as the former US auto metropolis experienced. I hope that state and local politicians will express the drama of the situation more clearly than before. And smart minds from business and science think about alternatives. You can no longer rely on Daimler and Co.

–