Continental plans up to 800 job cuts

German tyremaker and car parts group Continental AG plans to cut up to 800 of the 5,000 jobs at its home base in Hanover, its main labour union said November 22.
A spokesman for the IG BCE union said he expected Continental to announce soon that 400 manufacturing jobs would go at the Hanover-Stoecken site and another 400 administrative posts were set to be eliminated.
No one was immediately available for comment at Continental.
Chief Executive Manfred Wennemer told a newspaper on Sunday that Continental would decide in the next few weeks whether to cut around 320 jobs in its home city of Hanover. "We have excess capacity in tyres. As a business we are therefore forced to cut jobs, in particular where the costs are highest," he was quoted as saying.
The union thinks Continental's job cuts wil be just the first step towards transferring all tyre production away from Germany and into low-cost manufacturing centres, the spokesman said.