German manufacturing conglomerate Siemens AG is considering moving more than 10,000 jobs to low-wage countries in eastern Europe and Asia, union sources said on Monday.
Siemens management and the IG Metall engineering union will discuss next week ways to cut costs at several German plants which could otherwise be at least partially relocated, one source said.
"The order of magnitude we are talking about here is definitely a five-digit number," one source said. "We assume that Siemens means it seriously."
The talks concern plants at Siemens' mobile and fixed-line phone equipment units and its automation and power transmission units, the sources said.