About 250 employees of the automotive supplier Schaeffler have reduced their working hours at the beginning of this month, a corporate spokeswoman said. More than half of the employees working in special purpose machinery at the Frauenaurach location in Erlangen are working away. On average, it is about a reduction of 25 percent.
Schaeffler suffers from the decline in production in the automotive industry and the technological change from the combustion engine to alternative drives. Short-time work already exists in a few third-party subcontracting sectors in some third-party suppliers.
Schaeffler had presented a contingency plan in March, including the possibility of short-time work and additional closing days on bridge days. Likewise, the company had announced to reduce 700 jobs in Germany. With measures such as short-time working and overtime reduction, the company, which is listed in the small-cap index SDax, wants to avoid redundancies due to operational reasons.
Recently, Schaeffler had to extend its contingency plan: from 1 December, the contracts of employees whose working time was increased from 35 to 40 hours, should be reduced again to the collectively agreed 35-hour week. This applies initially only for some divisions, it said. Others could follow.
How long exactly the short-time work, the Franconian auto parts supplier did not want to specify: The step applies "until further notice". Headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Germany, the group employs more than 90,000 people worldwide and generated sales of 14.2 billion euros in 2018.
