Man Wants To Cut Around 9,500 Jobs Worldwide

Man Wants To Cut Around 9,500 Jobs Worldwide

The truck and bus manufacturer MAN in Munich wants to cut around 9,500 jobs worldwide by 2023. The group announced that the executive board had decided on a "comprehensive realignment". To this end, a package of measures is planned that should bring savings of around 1.8 billion euros. MAN stated that a "significant downsizing" was necessary in all areas. In addition, the managers want to move production and development to other locations. The production site in Steyr, Austria, and the plants in Plauen (Saxony) and Wittlich (Rhineland-Palatinate) could be closed completely. MAN announced "prompt" negotiations with the employee representatives.

Works council criticizes "lawn mower method"

The Group's works council reacted with sharp criticism to the announced job cuts. "It cannot be that downsizing and site closings are the only solutions that the board can think of," said chairman Saki Stimoniaris. He described the plans as "concepts from deep below from the moth box" and as the "lawnmower method". This would mean that almost every second job in Austria and Germany would be lost. In the past, the company's management failed to provide sufficient returns in times of good economic activity to survive a crisis like the current one. The workforce can neither do anything for the corona nor the economic crisis and should now pay for it anyway. But that cannot be done with the works council. Stimoniaris called for the exclusion of redundancies for operational reasons and announced that it would submit its own ideas for the future of MAN to the Executive Board.

Falling demand

Together with the Swedish truck manufacturer Scania, MAN belongs to the Volkswagen Group and is one of the leading commercial vehicle groups in Europe. The turnover last year was around eleven billion euros. The company employed almost 39,000 people in 2019. The industry is also under pressure because of the sharp drop in demand for trucks worldwide. In Europe, MAN was expecting a decline of 10 to 20 percent this year even before the corona pandemic, although sales increased in 2019.