MAN Nutzfahrzeuge and employee representatives in Salzgitter today reached agreement as to how the plant there is to be made fit for the future. This creates a basis for making the bus sector of MAN altogether more profitable and at the same time for avoiding redundancies.
Production of bus chassis in Salzgitter will be restructured and further developed into a competence centre through investment in a new assembly line. Beside this a new logistics centre is to be built; this will provide jobs for some 220 people and in future group together several stores currently outside the plant. In addition some 250 employees will move to the expanding truck production at the Salzgitter plant. Low-floor buses will in future be built at the existing locations in Poland. By 2012 MAN will invest some 60 million euros in the location, thus safeguarding its long-term future. To exploit synergies central functions will be relocated; the precise details are still under discussion.
A detailed agreement is to be concluded swiftly on the basis of the main points agreed. "We are happy that we have been able to offer all employees an acceptable solution and achieve the necessary structural improvements," said Joachim Durr, Chairman of the Board of Management of NEOMAN, the bus subsidiary of MAN Nutzfahrzeuge. "Right from the start we attached great importance to avoiding redundancies and, together with the employees, to finding solutions that will help everyone," he continued. The measures agreed, including the synergies with the truck sector, will lead to considerable improvements in profitability in 2008 and in the following years.
Since the end of July several rounds of negotiations on the bus sector in Salzgitter have been held in order to make the MAN Nutzfahrzeuge Group’s Bus Division fit for the future and also more profitable. Another declared aim of the management was to avoid redundancies. Both objectives can now be achieved on the basis of the main points agreed.
For further information see www.man-mn.com/presse
