BMW’s personnel director, Ernst Baumann, is sticking to his plan to reduce the permanent head count at the company by 2,500 people in Germany this year, but the works council and local IG Metall union representatives doubt that the automaker will be able to achieve this.
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BMW announced earlier this year that it wants to cut the workforce by 8,100, of which 5,000 would be hourly workers, and 600 would be overseas workers. 3% of a total of 80,000 jobs in Germany would also go, giving the remaining 2,500.
According to Automobilwoche, to achieve a 3% reduction in the 21,000 jobs at Dingolfing, 630 posts would have to go. However head of the plant works council, Stefan Schmid, only expects 100-200 workers to sign up for voluntary redundancy.
The IG Metall Bavaria representative told Automobilwoche that he expects BMW to increase incentives for workers to leave their jobs voluntarily.
Baumann told Automobilwoche that he would not rule this out. He said there are no fixed incentives for taking voluntary redundancy and that it depends on individual situations. Baumann said he was hoping to speak to IG Metall in the near future about the details for reducing the workforce.
New working time contracts are due to come into force in April and Baumann said that he expected these to have some impact.
