Germany: crisis hits many employees hard - survey - 19 Feb 2010

Many German companies react with dismissals, shortening of the working hours and cuts in wages to pull through the current economic crisis. 

Especially the metal industry is going through a particular bad time. 

Our German counterpart, the WageIndicator.de, collected surveys from 10,000 German workers between August and December 2009. 

38 percent of those who participated said their company was doing worse, compared to the beginning of 2009. In the metal industry this percentage goes up to 65 percent. 

In 41 percent of the cases, the number of those on the payroll had decreased, again higher in the metal industry with 67 percent, in the chemical industry with 53 percent and in the financial industry with 47 percent. The hotel and catering industry was hit by 46 percent. 

Companies were using different tools to reduce the payroll:

Here you can find the original article (in German)

And here the full report in pdf.