Germany: BASF grants job security to 33,000 employees until 2015

Social partnership at the heart of modernization.  After Siemens, which offered its German employees employment guarantee tacitly renewable, now BASF is giving 5 years of job security (January 1, 2011-December 31, 2015) to 33,000 German employees, i.e. a little under one third of its total workforce (105,000).  Most employees concerned work on BASF’s key site in Germany, in Ludwigshafen, birthplace of the company.  This agreement, entitled “Securing the future via flexibility and social partnership” celebrates the good internal relations between the social partners and places cooperation at the center of a general strategy to modernize the production apparatus. In addition, this agreement replaces an agreement on job security signed in 2004 which expires at the end of the year: “We voluntarily took the time to discuss with the management, to intensely work on the bottom of things in order to develop durable strategies.  Not only is this agreement an important sign for employment at BASF but it’s also a starting point to improve competitiveness on the Ludwigshafen site and on our international sites” said Robert Oswald, chairman of the WC who, just as BASF’s director of personnel, Harald Schwager, explained that this agreement was also the result of trust and cooperation that grew between the management and the staff representatives during the crisis.