Editor in chief at IamExpat Media
The Volkswagen subsidiary Audi has announced that it will cut 9.500 jobs in Germany by 2025 - about one fifth of its total workforce.
After several months of negotiations with the works council, the German car manufacturer announced on Tuesday that 9.500 of its total 61.000 jobs in the federal republic would be cut over the next five years.
At the same time, however, the company is looking to hire up to 2.000 specialists in e-mobility and other future-orientated fields. This brings the total amount of jobs lost to 7.500, thereby bringing a saving of around six billion euros for the company to redirect into electrification and digitisation.
Audi is hoping to manage the job cuts through a mixture of natural employee turnover and early retirement, so that redundancies can be avoided. The existing employment guarantee for the remaining employees at the Audi plants in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm will be extended from 2025 to 2029.
Audi has come under pressure since the diesel scandal was uncovered in 2015 and is clearly falling behind its competitors Daimler and BMW. Struggling with sluggish business, the expensive conversion to electric vehicles and the fallout of the scandal, it has now been forced by parent company Volkswagen to make savings.
At the beginning of the month, Audi lowered its sales forecast after a weak third quarter. Between July and September it produced almost 451.000 cars - 8.000 fewer than in the same quarter of the previous year.
The situation at the Neckarsulm plant, where the Audi models A4 to A8 and R8 are built, is especially critical. For the third year in a row, it is expected that fewer than 200.000 cars will be manufactured there. The plant has an annual capacity of 300.000. In future, this will be brought down to 225.000 vehicles.