The cuts represent about 10% of Bosch’s total workforce in the country, and 3% of its staff worldwide. Workers’ representatives vowed to resist the cuts, labelling them ‘unprecedented.’
German industrial giant Bosch said Thursday, September 25, it would cut 13,000 jobs, mostly in its auto unit, in the latest blow for the country’s ailing car sector.
The auto industry in Europe’s biggest economy has been hammered by fierce competition in key market China, weak demand and a slower than expected shift to electric vehicles.
The cuts, all of which will take place in Germany, represent about 10% of Bosch’s total workforce in the country, and 3% of its staff worldwide.
Bosch − the world’s biggest auto supplier, making everything from braking and steering systems to sensors − said the layoffs were needed to help make annual savings of €2.5 billion in the group’s car unit.
You mean all of us average earners aren’t buying $80,000 electric cars in droves during this time of insane inflation? Weird!
Not sure that would help that much. A good amount of Bosch’s business is in manufacturing parts for internal combustion engines, that’s going away in any case.
You do have the Renault 4 and 5 that are reasonably priced. And I think Fiat also has a reasonably priced model.
EU has 13 EVs under 25,000 euros. North American EVs are overpriced.
I wouldn’t call that reasonable pricing, for what I can get it in my country. €28k - some subsidies is double what I’ve paid for a substantially bigger car 8 years ago. Not to mention that pretty low range that resets to garbage in winter months.
We’re fairly limited in North America, unfortunately.
I quickly looked it up and i saw a report that bosh received almost a billion in subsidies, not sure which time period tho. And it said the company had 2024 3,4 billion in profit.
so i assumr they will have to pay that money back now 🙃🙃
You know, they could just give this money to the people instead so they consume products and thereby stimulate the economy.
that would be communist
I didn’t even realize Bosch was involved with autos, but apparently:
Bosch − the world’s biggest auto supplier, making everything from braking and steering systems to sensors
They’re huge. And a significant part of their portfolio is specific to combustion engines.
Not the reason for the layoffs.
German automakers are driving consumers to other companies, thanks to poor reliability and genius ideas like subscriptions for features. They make too many similar models, all overpriced and none reliable. Buyers are fed up.
That itself is more of a symptom than the root cause.
Bosch doesn’t build cars though, they make parts, specifically a lot of parts for combustion engines such as engine control units. I’m sure you’ll find their parts in a lot more than just german cars. So this is about cars with combustion engines, not about german cars.
I see, hence the layoffs.
A fuel pump is colloquially called a boschpump here. Even when its not made by bosch, they’ll tell you your boschpump is bad.
TIL Robert Bosch was an upstanding guy (and, according to workers’ representatives, would be “rotating in his grave”). Also there used to exist an organisation in the US called The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor that he was a member of. Someone revive that Order.
A friend of mine is a higher up and checks the numbers of plants and their productions. They found out that for certain plants numbers were not verifiable. They saw this coming. There is mismanagement in plants here, and plants that don’t really make anything, but try to fake their numbers. But we’re talking about plants that technically have good potential either, but have the wrong focus, at least that’s what my friend believes. I’m not surprised this happened.
I’m keeping this message intentionally vague to protect my friend.
I hate paying 5x for a German-made Bosch spare part for my car when I’m tired of the AliExpress quality lottery but I have to admit it’s one of the few hardware manufacturers I still think pretty highly of. They make Dremels too, right? I imported one of those at an extortionate price and haven’t regretted a single penny, reminds me of how old durable tools were built to actually last.
When I was a kid and you picked up something with a (for example) Sony logo on it, you know you were holding something that was at least relatively well made. Nowadays pretty much every single company gives me marrow-sucking quality-be-damned vibes. And come to think of it Bosch was not one of the companies I saw that way.
Disgusting how they’re treating their workers (who I’m assuming are damn good at their job given how highly I think of Bosch’s stuff), but someone still needs to be doing that job.
I had their lawnmower and a vacuum and they were both pretty crappy.
They’ve started selling their brand to external manufacturers a while ago. A pretty strong sign where they’ve been headed.
That’s a shame. Never had any of their household appliances so I wouldn’t know. I’m mostly thinking about power tools, auto parts, and like those laser distance things.
I have their mower and vacuum, they’re decent for what amount of plastic they’re made of. The thing that keeps me switching from Bosch is their sparepart catalogue, one of the only brands that have ALL the spare parts for said vacuum. Why buy new when I can fix the old one?
Here’s a short reminder that one of the major causes why Hitler got into power was because there was an unemployment crisis in germany and hitler promised to give the people jobs.
Unemployment crises can be a major crisis, people shouldn’t underestimate this.
I am advocating for human spaceflight and mars settlement mostly because it would generate jobs and give people something to do; hopefully enough to distract them from destroying the world.
I’m not so sure about Mars settlements being a productive thing to spend resources on, but I do agree that unemployment can cause grave social and political issues.
It’s very easy to blame “others” and this time it’s going to be “the foreigners”.
Germany has a 3.7% unemployment rate, which is going up a bit, but that is quite far away from mass unemployment Germany faced when Hitler took over.
This is just the combination of EV taking over and general lower car sales hitting the industry hard. It has to happen and is honestly a good thing long term. Other sectors of the economy are doing okay and baby boomers are retiring, so the work force is shrinking anyway. The situation is not even close to what happened in Germany when Hitler took over.
I only know them for tools.
Good, German cars are quite terrible given their reputation.
anyone who has owned one has replaced at least half a dozen Bosch sensors. AUDI, BMW, etc, are lease cars, 3-4 years and run away.
And charging subscriptions for features already built into the car is [chef’s kiss].
What about the famous German workers protection laws and unions I keep hearing about
Friend of Mine got let go over one these kind of layoffs. He had half he year where he stayed at home while still recieving his pay check in addition to half a month one time pay for each year worked there. Also he had the choice to accept it.
Let’s compare that to America: Two weeks notice. If you’re lucky.
Nice, in America you are lucky if they pay you for your unused vacation days
What’s a “vacation day”?
It’s harder to fire people in most EU countries compared to the US, but layoffs are entirely different. If the employees have reason to think this is unjustified firing rather than true layoffs, they have recourse. They need to provide notice, the jobs need to be cut permanently, and they must be unable to move the employees to other suitable jobs within the company.
Those people no doubt got a very advanced notice, received at least 3 month paycheck, and are able to claim good unemployment benefits for at least 3 month while they looking for a new job.
