Germany - Siemens protects 128,000 jobs in Germany - September 22, 2010

In an agreement signed 22 September with the Works Council and the IG Metall union, the Managing Board of engineering giant Siemens has agreed to protect the jobs of 128,000 German employees of Siemens AG indefinitely. Under the pact, the works council must approve lay-offs, effectively providing a job guarantee for Siemens workers. The deal applies to all employees at Siemens subsidiaries within Germany, with the exception of the troubled IT-branch SIS. The Siemens conglomerate employs 400,000 people in 190 countries, among them 128,000 in Germany. The new job guarantee agreement will dissolve a two-year 2008 accord, which included a savings program worth billions of Euros to prevent the loss of thousands of jobs following the financial crisis. Works Council and union regard the deal as an acknowledgement by Siemens of the sacrifices its employees made during the crisis by accepting pay cuts and working shorter hours.

English: http://www.thelocal.de/money/20100922-29991.html

German: http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/0,1518,718797,00.html#ref=top

This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI atwww.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2009.