German ZF – or ZF Friedrichshafen AG – came out of 2024 with a deficit of 7.5 billion Danish kroner. Now 14,000 people are to be laid off.
German ZF Friedrichshafen AG is in the midst of an acute crisis. The carmaker came out of 2024 with a deficit of a whopping 7.5 billion kroner.
Automobilwoche writes this week.
But at ZF, which makes its living by building gearboxes, it has long been known that things are going in the wrong direction. Last year, it was announced that the company would be laying off workers.
A total of 14,000 people will have to leave because 44 billion kroner must be found in savings over the next 5 years.
In total, ZF, whose full name is ZF Friedrichshafen AG, has 54,000 employees. And it is 14,000 of them that the company management wants to get rid of by 2026.
The announcement raises concerns among the union-elected shop stewards in the so-called cooperation council, which is a link between the employees and management.
– This announcement raises concerns when we actually need full commitment to delivering to customers, managing the recession and transformation, said Achim Dietrich, chairman of the cooperation council, which is the link between employees and management at ZF, in July 2024.
But the criticism doesn't end there. The IG Metall union in Bavaria, which organizes most of ZF's employees, places the responsibility for the 44 billion kroner shortfall in the coffers directly on the management.
– The company's management has put ZF in a difficult position through strategic misjudgments and failed financing models when billions have been acquired.
“Employees should hold their heads high in the face of these fatal management errors. We will defend ourselves against this,” says IG Metall district manager Horst Ott.
ZF is far from the only one with a terrible lack of money in its coffers. In Austria, Magna Steyr, which built cars for Fisker Inc., is trying to cover a billion-dollar loss.
Magna Steyr management believes that they lost 2.7 billion kroner on Fisker Inc.'s bankruptcy. The money is partly money that the factory in Austria never received for building cars for Fisker, and partly money that was lost on the shares in the car brand that were given instead of cash.
But even the much more established brands are struggling with downturns. At Volkswagen, three factories in Germany and 35,000 employees are to be cut.
Sister brand Audi has closed its factory in Belgium and laid off several thousand employees. And at Porsche, 4,500 positions are to be lost.
The situation is even worse at Skoda, where almost double the number of employees are being laid off. However, the director at Skoda is angry that the media reported the story. Read more about it here.
