Continental is planning a reorganization program that affects about one-tenth of the world's approximately 244,000 jobs. The auto parts supplier and tire manufacturer also do not exclude operational redundancies in order to escape the crisis in the industry. But they are the "last resort".
In the course of the changes initiated by the Supervisory Board, up to 20,000 jobs are likely to be affected within ten years, said the Dax Group from Hanover following a meeting of the Supervisory Board, including about 7,000 of the more than 62,000 jobs in Germany.
The planned changes ranged from downsizing to relocations within the group to the possible sale of parts of the business. A plant in the US with 650 employees and a location in Malaysia with 270 employees are to be shut down. Further projects are still being negotiated.
A Conti spokesperson emphasized that the "changes" refer to new job requirements. It's not about job cuts or even layoffs. The goal is to offer new jobs to many of the affected employees in the internal labor market.
Costs are expected to fall by half a billion euros annually
With this and through possible partial sales, Conti wants to reduce the annual gross costs from 2023 to around 500 million euros. The conversion is expected to cost a total of around 1.1 billion euros, most of them in the years 2019 to 2022. In return, in areas such as software development, new jobs would be created "in large numbers". For this purpose, the group wants to push the training.
The amount of job cuts was not quantified by the Group. This depends on the now beginning negotiations with the employee representatives at the individual locations, said a spokesman. The costs should decrease by the conversion from 2023 annually by half a billion euro. At the same time, Conti wants to continue to grow and hire staff in growth areas such as electromobility.
With the biggest overhaul in the company's history, Continental is responding to the decline in global auto production and increasing customer demand for digital solutions. The group had scaled down its business goals several times in the past twelve months. At the end of July, the management had announced a program to permanently secure financial strength and increase competitiveness in the face of the doldrums. Even then it was said that even locations would be checked. Since then, the management negotiated with the employee representatives on the austerity program.