Siemens labour representatives want to negotiate a permanent cut in working hours in exchange for lower pay to pre-empt any moves by the German conglomerate to axe jobs, its works council head told a newspaper. "We will sit with the board at the start of the new fiscal year and discuss what other possible measures would be needed if the (economic) crisis continued," Lothar Adler said in a Sunday pre-release of an interview in daily Die Welt's Monday edition.
Siemens has so far made temporary cuts to the working hours of around 20,000 of a total of 135,000 employees in Germany in response to the world-wide recession. Under German law, companies can reduce working hours for up to 24 months as a means of avoiding mandatory layoffs.
Adler said that, under the current arrangement, there could be problems if the economic downturn persisted beyond that deadline. Such a scenario would have to be discussed once Siemens' fiscal year starts in October. He rebuffed speculation that Siemens is discussing with its workforce a major job cuts programme on top of the one launched last year to save 1.2 billion euros by 2010. Siemens announced last year it would cut 17,000 sales and administration jobs world-wide.
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