Bosch, the world’s biggest supplier of car parts and manufacturer of domestic appliances, plans to cut its staffing by 10,000 jobs this year and to keep a further 100,000 other workers on reduced hours.
The 10,000 job cuts are expected to be made worldwide from among Bosch’s 280,000 staff, but it has not said how many of its 5,000 UK staff will be affected. Bosch is expected to report its first full-year loss since the Second World War, with sales down by around 15 per cent to €38 billion (£34 billion), said Franz Fehrenbach, the company’s chief executive.
Bosch operates nine divisions in Britain, including those that produce garden and household goods and security systems. Bosch garden appliances and electrical generators are manufactured in the UK, while the remaining staff are mainly employed in marketing and sales roles.
British workers at Bosch may be at less risk of job cuts after Mr Fehrenbach’s comments, at the Frankfurt Motor Show, that most of the cutbacks would come in its automotive operations. Bosch’s revenue from vehicle technology was down by as much as a fifth. He noted that Bosch was seeing “the first signs of a recovery” and predicted that group sales revenue was set to rise in the fourth quarter after a difficult period due to economic downturn.
However Mr Fehrenbach did say, “Overall, it could take until 2012 until we reach the pre-recession level of 2007 again”.
Bosch has nearly 300 subsidiary companies, and 60% of the group’s revenue comes from car components, including batteries, hybrid technology and stereos.
The company did not announce how many jobs it had cut this year, but Mr Fehrenbach said: “At the end of 2009, Bosch Group is likely to employ around 270,000 staff, 10,000 less than at the beginning of 2009.”