Germany’s automotive industry is suffering and, according to its companies, does not envisage a return to pre-pandemic production levels before the 2023-2025. Considered too rigid over the long term, many now deem short-time working as no longer being tenable. As such, companies such as ZF Friedrichshafen, Bosch, and Daimler have undertaken to negotiate reduced working hours agreements with the IG Metall union in exchange for job security committments. However, not everyone agrees with this solution, preferring instead Continental’s solution of making major job cuts. For the time being, and despite a new informal summit on 08 September, to which the Chancellor and the main regional politicians and sector employers’ representatives will attend, no new aid measures are to be expected from the government.
Logistics chains that are struggling to deliver, sharply declining sales, production overcapacity, and a structural transition from the normally aspirated internal combustion engine to the electric engine: “Faced with all this, the automobile is in need of major adjustments in terms of personnel and will not be able to play its traditional role as the locomotive of the German economy,” according to the authors of a German Economic Institute (IW) report on the German automobile industry presented in Cologne on 07 September. This observation and these concerns are currently at the heart of the dialogue between the sector’s social partners.
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