By 2029, that is, over the next four years, Audi, the German luxury carmaker will let go 7,500 people from its workforce in Germany. That means about 14 per cent of its workforce will be laid off, primarily in the administration and development divisions.
The factory workers of this subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group will not be impacted, as per media reports. The company is gearing to spend over $8 billion on its facilities across Germany over the next four years.
The management and labour unions have planned to embrace measures that will result in savings to the tune of $1.1 billion annually.
Over the past six years Audi has already trimmed its workforce by about 9,500 to save valuable money that it required for the electric vehicles division. The car manufacturer has reportedly witnessed a 12 per cent fall in sales.
Last week it was announced that redundancy programmes at Volkswagen’s Cariad software unit will lead to 1,600 job cuts by the end of this year. Cariad is the automotive software firm of the Volkswagen Group founded in 2020, to create and deliver synergetic digital technology for the auto maker’s car brands. About 30 per cent of the 5,900-strong workforce at Cariad will be rendered jobless. This was part of a transformation plan that was already drawn for Cariad about two years ago. Measures were taken to increase efficiency and ensure better performance at the software solutions firm, with headcount being looked at now.
Volkswagen(VW) has been considering closing some plants in Germany amid efforts to regain its competitive edge in Europe. This could mean thousands of job cuts as these German plants employ about 1.2 lakh workers.
