Struggling German carmaker Mercedes-Benz announced Thursday it will halt all investment in Germany and is mulling plant closures, underlining the woes facing the country\u2019s automotive sector.\n<\/p>\n
Like its German peers, Mercedes has been battered by Chinese competition and high costs, and last month became the third big German carmaker to cut its outlook for the year.\n<\/p>\n
Its management has been locked in talks with staff representatives to find ways to reduce costs but, with little sign that negotiations were making progress, the manufacturer signalled a harder line.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe executive board has jointly decided to halt all further investments in German sites,\u201d said board member Michael Schiebe in an interview posted on the company\u2019s intranet and sent to AFP.<\/p>\n
Management was unable to see any way forward on finding a deal with unions \u201cdespite numerous intensive discussions,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are now forced to carefully examine which German sites we would have to close if we cannot achieve a change in the cost structure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schiebe stressed, however, that management still hoped for a breakthrough in talks and that \u201cwe want the next generations of vehicles to also be built at our German locations.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was nevertheless the possibility that \u201cour new products will only be manufactured abroad,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
\u2013\u00a0 \u2018Biggest crisis\u2019 \u2013<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n The powerful IG Metall union is currently demanding a pay rise of five per cent in wage negotiations with the company.\n<\/p>\n In the same document published on Thursday, another board member Britta Seeger called the union\u2019s demand \u201ctotally excessive.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cSuch an increase would further drive up labour costs, already high in Germany, when they are already far too high in international comparison,\u201d she argued.\n<\/p>\n The company wants to implement a \u201cproductivity offensive\u201d to drive down costs, including an increase in working hours for no extra pay, but here too there has been no agreement with the unions.\n<\/p>\n \u201cThese are uncomfortable topics, but it is part of our job as the board to raise them, if we want to change things,\u201d said Seeger.<\/p>\n Auto sector analyst Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer said that Thursday\u2019s news was indicative of the fact that Germany\u2019s car industry is in \u201cits biggest crisis since its inception.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Mercedes\u2019 announcement was in itself \u201cnot a surprise,\u201d Dudenhoeffer said, noting that the company had been \u201cstressing for months how difficult the situation is at its German sites.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \u201cWithout a fundamental realignment of the cost structure in Germany, the automotive industry here will simply die out,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n Last month Mercedes-Benz revised its profit outlook down to 5.8 billion euros ($6.5 billion), on a par with 2025. It had previously foreseen an increase of at least 15 per cent.\n<\/p>\n BMW and Volkswagen had both already cut their guidance for the year after sluggish demand combined with cut-throat competition from Chinese rivals such as BYD and Xiaomi ate into profits.\n<\/p>\n Volkswagen plans to have cut 120,000 jobs globally by the end of the decade in what is the largest restructuring in automotive history, eclipsing the 50,000 jobs lost after the bankruptcy of General Motors in 2009.\n<\/p>\n AFP<\/p>\n Source: <\/p>\n Struggling German carmaker Mercedes-Benz announced Thursday it will halt all investment in Germany and is mulling plant closures, underlining the woes facing the country\u2019s automotive sector. Like its German peers,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}