Emrullah Karaca checks hydraulic valve blocks at his work place on the Continental Automotive Applied sciences’ plant in Gifhorn, Germany, on April 23, 2024. Manufacturing of the automobile element on the city of Gifhorn will finish in 2027 and transfer to Croatia, the Czech Republic and Wales to maintain the prices “aggressive”, in keeping with Continental, which can lower about 7,000 jobs worldwide. (Picture by Léa PERNELLE / AFP)
Emrullah Karaca has made brakes for the previous 20 years, however he’s now studying to assemble warmth pumps as a substitute, because the Continental manufacturing facility the place he works in northern Germany is slated to shut.
Manufacturing of the automobile element on the city of Gifhorn will finish in 2027 and transfer to Croatia, the Czech Republic and Wales to maintain the prices “aggressive”, in keeping with Continental, which can lower about 7,000 jobs worldwide.
The relocation means a brand new profession for 49-year-old Karaca, one in all a rising variety of employees in corporations supplying Germany’s very important automotive sector who’re being hit by a tsunami of redundancies.
Dealing with as much as the double shock of the tip of combustion engines and rising competitors from China, European suppliers like Bosch, ZF, and Webasto have all introduced cuts — which have piled as much as the purpose the place the difficulty has solid a shadow on the forthcoming EU elections.
Brussels has promised to do extra to spice up the home automobile business and sort out unfair competitors from cheaper Asian rivals.
However the EU plans to outlaw the sale of recent fossil fuel-powered vehicles from 2035, which means some jobs will inevitably change into redundant.
Battery swap
The upcoming closure of the Continental plant in Gifhorn has been the catalyst for Karaca and the opposite 800 workers working there to begin retraining in one other space.
A neighborhood heating techniques firm, Stiebel Eltron, has proposed to take over the location and retain some workers for future manufacturing.
“Brakes or warmth pumps, it’s all the identical to me,” mentioned Karaca, whose two mother and father each labored for Continental on the manufacturing facility.
Making exhausts, headlights, gearboxes or brakes has lengthy been a gradual job with suppliers in Germany alone using some 270,000 folks.
However the applied sciences they’ve specialised in are obsolescent and the method of constructing battery vehicles is a much less labor-intensive enterprise.
“If as we speak you want 100 folks to supply a traditional motor, then with the electrical motor you solely want 10,” mentioned Jutta Rump, a enterprise professor at Ludwigshafen College.
In Gifhorn, Stiebel Eltron is providing the prospect of additional employment to some 300 of Continental’s workforce.
One other 100 might discover a dwelling at a close-by Siemens mobility plant that provides rail corporations.
Poor prospects
What jobs stay are beneath growing strain from Chinese language rivals, who’re hauling in a rising share of the market.
Chinese language battery maker CATL has grown in brief order to change into the world’s third largest auto provider, in a sector nonetheless led by Bosch, in keeping with consultancy Roland Berger.
In Germany, one in three corporations within the sector is planning to maneuver a part of its manufacturing overseas within the coming years to chop prices, in keeping with a research by the German carmakers affiliation VDA.
The axe has already fallen on 3,400 employees at Ford’s manufacturing facility in Saarlouis, within the west of Germany.
The plant closure takes with it a complete community of native suppliers, whose employees staged a six-day strike in March to get higher redundancy phrases.
Amongst them, 33-year-old Luca Thonet, employed by Ford provider Lear, mentioned he wish to keep within the area, near the French border.
“However there’s virtually no business left within the area, and the opposite factories aren’t in an excellent state of affairs both,” he advised AFP.
Thonet cited the state of affairs at ZF, the second-largest German auto provider, which introduced the closure of two websites in its home market.
The ZF works council fears some 12,000 job cuts may very well be within the pipeline, with a quantity falling in the identical area as Saarlouis.
Germany could also be going through a scarcity of employees, however not all sectors are equally impacted.
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In IT, product improvement, or gross sales “there’s an absence of certified personnel”, mentioned skilled Rump. “That’s not the case in manufacturing.”
