Thousands of jobs at Bosch still depend on the combustion engine business. The change to e-mobility leads to uncertainty. Now an agreement should ensure more security – at least until 2027.
The automotive supplier Bosch and employee representatives have agreed on how they want to shape the transition to electromobility in the future. One of the key points of the agreement is the exclusion of redundancies until the end of 2027. Almost 80,000 employees in Germany are affected by this, the company, the general works council and the IG Metall trade union announced on Tuesday. This creates planning and security for the employees of the Mobility division, i.e. the supplier division.
According to the information, the agreement also regulates the exchange with employee representatives. In the case of strategic issues, more intensive participation should be established. In the future, the works councils should be involved before location decisions are made and be able to propose alternatives. These regulations are laid down in a future collective agreement. This will ensure the future viability of the German Mobility locations in the long term, it said.
The head of the general works council for the supplier division, Frank Sell, was satisfied with the agreement: “We started with an extensive package of negotiations and have achieved very good joint results on all points,” he is quoted as saying in the statement. The employees of the division could initially look forward to a secure job. “What’s even more important is that the works councils are now involved in strategic and economic planning at an early stage, for example with regard to the location of future products”.
Hoping for hydrogen
One of these future products could be hydrogen. According to earlier information from Sell, one of the hopes of the Bosch workforce lies in this topic. In a next step, concrete target images are to be formulated for the individual locations.
The agreement was praised as a milestone by the company. Bosch labor director Stefan Grosch said: “We are pleased that we have achieved a result that is acceptable for all parties on this complex issue.” The change in mobility is changing Bosch’s business significantly. “For us, it is important to remain efficient and competitive. We can only do this if everyone pulls together and takes responsibility,” said Grosch.
Bosch employees in Germany have long feared for their jobs. The reason for this are numerous transformation processes. In addition to the shift towards e-mobility, the development of software and automated driving functions are also becoming increasingly important for the automotive supplier. However, many Bosch jobs still depend on the traditional business with the combustion engine.
There is also a trend in the industry to locate production for electromobility in Eastern Europe. Because of a planned Bosch plant in the Czech Republic, general works council chief Sell and other employee representatives rounded up a good 17,000 employees at nine German locations for a special works meeting in February. In a step that was unusual for Bosch, he then went before the press and asked for talks.
The supplier division is the largest division of Bosch. They accounted for almost 60 percent of the 88.2 billion euros that the company generated in sales last year. More than half of the approximately 420,000 employees worldwide work in this area.
Source: Stern
