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Production in the Daimler plant in Bremen
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Some things cannot be bought with all the money in the world.
Love should be part of it, but due to the current market situation apparently also microchips for Autoboard computers.
In any case, the Daimler Group has decided - although it closed last year with a whopping four billion euros in profit - to make use of the short-time work regulation for many employees again.
There is simply a lack of components to complete many vehicles.
Employees of the Mercedes plants in Rastatt and Bremen are affected, as the group confirmed on Tuesday.
Daimler did not provide any specific figures.
The short-time work is initially applied for by the end of the week, but does not extend to the entire locations.
In Bremen, however, a large part of the employees is affected, in Rastatt it is about sub-areas.
The "Stuttgarter Zeitung" and the "Stuttgarter Nachrichten" had previously reported on it.
Chip shortage that has persisted for months
More than 12,000 people are employed in the Bremen plant and around 6,500 in Rastatt. According to Daimler, shifts will also be canceled this week at the plant in Kecskemét, Hungary, where around 4,700 people work.
The employees at these three and other Daimler locations had been temporarily put on short-time work over and over again in the past few months.
The chip crisis hit other German carmakers hard: In mid-May, it became known that the VW subsidiary Audi had to limit production in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm and send more than ten thousand employees on short-time work.
Initially, the measure should only apply until the end of May, but has now been extended to June, according to reports.
Due to the lack of semiconductor chips, other automakers such as Ford, VW and even Tesla have had to cancel shifts and cut back on production.
The chip manufacturer Intel had warned that the bottlenecks could last for several years - also because investments do not take effect immediately.
beb / dpa