The fronts at the Meyer shipyard had hardened for months. Now there is an agreement – also thanks to Lower Saxony’s finance minister. Cruise ships are currently not very popular.
At the cruise ship builder Meyer-Werft, 450 jobs are to be cut in the Corona crisis. The management, works council and IG Metall presented this agreement to the workforce on Wednesday in Papenburg an der Ems.
After the fronts in Germany’s largest shipbuilding company had hardened for months, Lower Saxony’s former Finance Minister Jürgen-Peter Schneider (SPD) successfully moderated the negotiations.
Because of the standstill in the cruise industry, the shipyard has 40 percent less work and must save 1.2 billion euros. The shipyard management had initially planned to cut at least 660 jobs. “We have managed to reduce the numbers,” said works council boss Nico Bloem at a works meeting. He spoke of an “acceptable compromise”.
Of the 3,900 Meyer employees in Papenburg, 350 will go to the shipyard and 100 to the subsidiary Ems Maritime Systems (EMS). A volunteer program and a transfer company are designed to keep the number of redundancies as low as possible. The remaining employees will work 100 hours a year free of charge.
The agreement should apply by the end of 2023. On Wednesday, however, the works councils and IG Metall members were still voting on the package at the shipyard. Bloem expected a result for Wednesday evening or Thursday morning.
“It is a good chance for a fresh start for the cooperation with the works council and the union,” says managing director Bernard Meyer. According to him, the Meyer shipyard, especially the Rostock subsidiary Neptun, is building two new tankers for the German armed forces. An order for the construction of a residential ship with more than 130 apartments is also in prospect.
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
