Knorr-Bremse has announced that the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is leading to far-reaching adaptation measures within the company.
Substantial proportions of customers and suppliers in Europe have temporarily shut down their production plants. Many customers have also reduced capacities in their administration and development departments. Against this backdrop, Knorr-Bremse has reached agreements with employee representatives across Germany with the aim of safeguarding jobs and being able to ramp up production again at any time in close coordination with customers.
All parts of Knorr-Bremse are said to be taking a proactive approach and adapting their activities flexibly to the current situation.
Knorr-Bremse CEO, Bernd Eulitz, explained: “Keeping our customers supplied takes top priority. Many of our customers have shut down operations for several weeks and we now have to adapt accordingly. At all our sites we are reconciling the interests of the company, our customers and our employees and together we will overcome the crisis.”
Most of the company’s sites in Germany are working short-time from this week onwards. This is said to mainly affect the Munich and Schwieberdingen sites and the Truck division plants in Aldersbach and Berlin, as well as the Rail division plant in Düsseldorf.
In the context of short-time working, between 20 and 60% of production and administrative activities will initially be cut back for around three months, including administration at the parent company Knorr-Bremse AG. The level of short-time working and the agreed duration varies from one site to the next. The largest Truck division plants in Germany – Aldersbach and Berlin – had already begun cutting back working hours in March. An additional contribution by the company will reportedly increase employees’ short-time working allowance to around 85%.
Chairman of the Knorr-Bremse Group Works Council, Michael Jell, added: “Our joint aim is to safeguard all jobs. At the same time we have to respond flexibly to the market situation, because we still want to have a stable and dependable employer when the crisis is over. And we are all making a decisive contribution to this.”
Where necessary and possible, Knorr-Bremse sites in other European countries, such as Italy, Spain and France, and in the USA are also making use of similar programs to help protect employees and ensure job security.
