GERMANY: The outline of Bombardier Transportation’s planned ‘reorientation and safeguarding’ of its German sites was agreed by management and employee representatives at a supervisory board meeting on June 29.
No plants are to close, but up to 2 200 jobs are expected to go across Germany by 2020, including 700 temporary positions, with the majority of the job losses at Görlitz and Hennigsdorf. 'Operational measures' and collective wage agreements will help to minimise the impact on the staff affected, and no compulsory redundancies are envisaged until 2019.
The Bautzen, Hennigsdorf, Kassel, Mannheim and Siegen facilities are be developed as global centres of competence for the entire group, with increased digitalisation and use of Industry 4.0 processes, while the Görlitz site ‘will also have a long-term development outlook’, Bombardier said. No ‘conceptual changes’ are foreseen at Braunschweig and the Berlin headquarters.
‘It was important that all parties, after intensive negotiations, were able to agree on the cornerstones of the long-term orientation of our sites’, said Wolfgang Tölsner, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Bombardier Transportation in Germany. ‘Upon mutual agreement, we accepted a convincing strategy today, setting the course for Bombardier to reach greater efficiency and competitiveness in Germany. This strategy for the future foresees investments of up to €70m in the German sites until 2019. All German sites will remain open.’
- Read our exclusive interview with Bombardier Transportation President Laurent Troger in the July 2017 issue of Railway Gazette International.
