Industrial giant promises workers ‘jobs for life’
128,000-strong workforce gets pledge from bosses
Workers at Siemens have agreed a deal with management that sees the German industrial conglomerate promising to secure the jobs of its employees ‘indefinitely’.
The move flies in the face of recent employment trends in the post-recession world that have seen less job security for workers, with companies seeking a more ‘flexible’ workforce.
Siemens announced that its agreement with the company’s works council and the IG Metall workers’ union includes a promise not to make any forced redundancies among its 128,000 German workers, including its subsidiaries.
“This represents a clear and long-term commitment to Germany as a business location,” said CEO Peter Loescher.
The move cannot be seen entirely as a means of rewarding loyal workers though as, despite the effects of the recession, German companies are currently experiencing a shortage of skilled workers including engineers. Siemens currently has around 3,000 vacancies.
Germany is also about to be hit by a wave of retirements that will see a large number of experienced engineers leaving the workplace.
The earliest the company can withdraw from the ‘jobs for life’ agreement is 2013. Siemens had a similar agreement from 2008, but which was only designed to weather the economic crisis, covering only 95,000 employees and expiring at the end of this month.
Lothar Adler, the head of Siemens’ combined work council, said the open-ended expansion of the agreement is “both sensible and oriented towards the future of both the employees and the company,” given current economic and social conditions.
Enforcible?
Not all commentators are convinced of the enforcibility of the deal though. Susanne Kohaut, of the Nuremburg-based Research Institute of the Federal Employment Agency, said that employers other than Siemens have broken similar agreements in the past.
“It’s not a really an enforceable right,” she told the Deutsche Welle publication.
Other German companies such as Daimler, Volkswagen and the Deutsche Bahn have similar employment guarantees to this, and Kohaut also explained that is one way for employers to better recruit and keep a qualified workforce.
Siemens’ image is in need of some rehabilitation, after it has been the subject of a corruption investigation that has seen two of its executives convicted of bribery to secure foreign contracts. Priot to its worker agreements the company also carried out a severe cost-cutting drive amid the tougher global economic conditions, laying off over 17,000 people in 2008.