Munich Dax group Linde suffers from sanctions: "It will not work without staff cuts"

Created: 06/03/2022, 09:42

The US management of the German Dax group Linde has not yet announced its plans.

(Archive image) © Matthias Balk/dpa/Symbolbild

The US management of the German Dax group Linde has not yet announced its plans.

The group, which is suffering from the Russian sanctions, will not be able to avoid downsizing.

Munich – It's about jobs in Germany.

"The Russia sanctions have their price and this is one of them," says a potentially affected person at the plant manufacturer Linde in Pullach, in the southern district of Munich.

Linde works council: "It won't work without staff cuts"

At a works meeting on Thursday, employees there wanted to find out from management what the sanctions imposed on Russia mean for their own jobs.

But that's undecided, with the hit to the backlog being huge.

Because around two-thirds of it depends on orders from Russia, above all from the state-owned company Gazprom there, work packages of this dimension were broken overnight due to sanctions - with inevitable consequences for jobs.

According to one of the participants, managers explained evasively and vaguely at the staff meeting that the number of employees had to be adjusted to the order backlog.

A works council assures that this does not mean that the number of employees will be halved.

However, it is also clear to him: "It will not work without staff cuts, we have to go through a valley of tears."

Around 3,300 people work in the affected Linde plant engineering division at three locations nationwide, a good two-thirds of them at the Pullach headquarters.

The aim of the works council and IG Metall is to cushion as much as possible with gentle instruments such as short-time work or sabbaticals, i.e. long-term vacations of up to one year.

However, it is uncertain whether and to what extent the Linde management will agree to this.

Linde wants to increase the order backlog with high pressure

Since the merger with US competitor Praxair in 2019, the group management has been based in the USA and from there decides on the fate of the staff in Germany.

The Linde employees in Pullach know Sanjiv Lamba, the new Linde boss since March, as an empathetic person.

But his predecessor Steve Angel is cut from a different cloth.

He is the chairman of the Linde board of directors, which in the US interpretation of this post entails some power.

Linde staff fear Angel is taking a tough stance and wants to shed jobs quickly to maintain returns.

Linde is also working flat out to replenish the order backlog for the construction of complex industrial plants.

"But it will take two to three years before we're back to the old level," the group estimates.

He has high hopes for hydrogen systems as an essential part of the energy transition.

But it will still take some time before major orders are ready to be announced.

This dry spell between broken orders from Russia and the new technological future must now be bridged.

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Linde employees hope for politics

The company itself is silent on how to deal with current capacity utilization problems.

The workforce expects decisions from US managers within six weeks.

"The Americans are in charge," is clear to the Linde employees in Germany.

They now also hope for politics.

New gas liquefaction plants have to be built in Asia if Germany wants to obtain a replacement for Russian pipeline gas from there in the foreseeable future.

Federal politicians should make sure that Linde receives such orders, say Linde employees and hope that this will not remain a pipe dream.