Industrial conglomerate Siemens on Thursday announced thousands of job cuts worldwide, most of them in its fossil fuels division, with unions and politicians in its home country Germany particularly outspoken against the plans.
A total of 6,900 workers are set to lose their jobs, around half of them in Germany, where Siemens also plans to close sites in the country's economically weaker east. "The power industry is experiencing disruption of unprecedented scope and speed," board member Lisa Davis said in a statement, saying layoffs were necessary to keep Siemens competitive.
The Munich-based group says global demand for the large turbines its power and gas unit produces "has fallen drastically" as renewable energy has become more popular. This has sapped profitability as there is not enough demand to keep its factories turning. In Germany, that division alone will shed 2,600 jobs and close sites in Goerlitz and Leipzig, both in the former communist east. "This is sad news... a sudden bolt from the blue for Leipzigers," said Stanislaw Tillich, premier of Saxony state.
Some 1,100 jobs are set to go in the rest of Europe, while the US will see 1,800 layoffs. German employee representatives have vowed to resist job cuts, as they would follow on the heels of flourishing annual results for the sprawling group. Chief executive Joe Kaeser had already warned of "painful cuts" last week, even as Siemens reported 11-percent growth in net profit for 2016-17, to 6.2 billion euros ($7.3 billion).
But he had pledged to "soften the blow" by reassigning or retraining workers, a promise the group reiterated Thursday. "Siemens must gradually ask itself, do we want to remain an integrated technology group, or is it only about pleasing shareholders?" Juergen Wechsler, head of the powerful IG Metall union in Bavaria, told news agency DPA.
The company - whose products range from trains to wind turbines to medical equipment - has already announced some 6,000 job cuts in its wind power unit, sapped by falling prices in major markets like India and the US. Further site closures and layoffs would be met with "creative forms of resistance," IG Metall board member Juergen Kerner warned in an interview with WirtschaftsWoche magazine on Wednesday. Siemens employs around 350,000 people worldwide, with around 115,000 of them in Germany.
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