BMW has had to go to court in a dispute over temporary workers at its plant in Leipzig, eastern Germany.
There, tt employs about 1,100 workers without longer-term contracts, or almost 30% of the total, Bloomberg News reported. Labour representatives refused to support a new round of temporary contracts, saying the practice creates a two-tier system of employees.
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“It’s clearly unusual for BMW to have such an argument in public,” Juergen Pieper, a Bankhaus Metzler analyst in Frankfurt, told Bloomberg. “BMW wants to protect its well-paid core staff, and the last crisis showed the importance of flexibility.”
The news agency said the confrontation underscores German companies’ push to make their workforce more nimble, in a country where rigid labour laws make hiring and firing protracted processes.
BMW Leipzig spokesman Jochen Mueller said temporary workers are paid the same base salaries as long-term employees and the mix gives the carmaker more flexibility. Another BMW spokesman, Jochen Frey, said permanent staff last year got a bonus worth close to a month’s salary which temps did not get. That bonus varies with corporate profit.
Leipzig, opened initially to make the 3-series sedan, now assembles the 1-series and X1 SUV and produced 186,800 units in 2010. BMW gave about 170 temporary workers in Leipzig permanent contracts in 2011 because of strong demand and the company is spending EUR400m (US$529m) to expand the factory, Bloomberg said.
The automaker plans to hire another 350 people permanently at the factory this year and welcomes applications from current temps, Mueller said.
German companies with more than 20 workers require approval from employee representatives when hiring. Should the court in Leipzig side with the employees’ decision to refuse backing the hiring, BMW will need to consider “alternatives,” Frey said, without elaborating.
“They tell us the next crisis is just around the corner, so they need temps in order to be able to cut staff quickly and cheaply,” Jens Koehler, who heads the works council at BMW’s Leipzig plant, told Bloomberg. “We don’t agree with that.”
German labour law stipulates that temporary employment must be transient while there is no definition for a maximum time period. Some BMW employees have been temps at the carmaker for years, the union said.
Each time a company cuts jobs, temporary workers are typically among the first to go, said IG Metall union vice chairman Detlef Wetzel.
“When the crisis hits, the number of temps will drastically be reduced,” he said. “Their assignments will simply be cancelled.”
