Volkswagen: a rigorous focus on efficiency
Volkswagen plans to cut administrative staff costs by a fifth, while the tire maker announced on Monday that it will cut thousands of jobs in its automotive division worldwide. The automaker will seek to save 10 billion euros between now and 2026, according to the newspaper Handelsblatt, citing an internal company podcast.
Gunnar Kilian, member of the Volkswagen Human Resources Council, assured in a conversation with the head of the VW brand, Thomas Schaefer, that the cuts will focus on costs reduction more than in the number of employees, according to the Handelsblatt report.
Volkswagen did not comment on the article, but said in an emailed statement Monday that the company will take advantage of a “demographic curve” in its plans, referring to the imminent retirement of the baby boomer generation, which outnumbers number to subsequent generations.
The specific details of the campaign in Volkswagen’s passenger brand, announced in June and currently being defined in talks between management and the works council, will be set in December.
The goal of the cost cuts is to boost a weakened margin, from 3.4% in the first nine months of this year, to 6.5%, as part of a companywide campaign to improve cost effectiveness in Volkswagen’s transition to electric vehicle production.
An internal brochure distributed by Volkswagen in July and to which it had access Reuters showed that the company offered a part-time retirement plan to workers born in 1966 and expects about 3,000 people to take advantage of the offer, in a move to reduce costs without laying off staff.
Continental: job cuts in the Automotive Division
The tire maker announced Monday that it will cut thousands of jobs in its automotive division around the world. Continental’s decision is aimed at a plan to save 400 million euros annually from 2025.
The exact number of Continental’s job reduction plan was not immediately clear, but it will amount to a “mid-four-digit range”according to the company.
The news comes at a time when the tire company is planning a restructuring and possible sales. In September, its CEO, Nikolai Setzer, stated that he was considering a change in ownership of the company’s ContiTech division.
The group’s main activities are tire manufacturing, the automobile division, which produces software, safety devices and autonomous driving technology, and a third division that manufactures digital technologies for automobiles and other sectors, called ContiTech.
The German publication Manager Magazin reported on Sunday the planned cuts in the automotive division, which could be around the 5,500 workersof which more than 1,100 would be in the company’s 30 headquarters in Germany.
With information from Reuters