German automotive supplier Schaeffler will cut a net 3,460 jobs across Europe and close five sites, four of them in Germany, in response to weak demand for combustion-engine components and a slower-than-expected shift to electric vehicles.
The company announced the programme on 3 November, saying it would affect 16 locations and that around 2,660 of the cuts would fall in Germany by 2028.
The scale of the reduction
The German reductions amount to roughly 9 per cent of the company’s core German workforce of 31,957. When earlier restructuring programmes and 1,800 partial-retirement agreements signed in early October are included, the total effect on the German headcount rises to around 18 per cent.
Sites being closed include Dortmund, which employs 430 people, and Morbach, with 160, both in the powertrain and chassis division. Berlin, with around 270 staff, and Schwalbach will also close, along with the Herstal site in Belgium, which has about 15 employees.
Around half of the affected positions are in production, 30 per cent in research and development and 20 per cent in other functions. Additional capacity and structural adjustments are planned at Haguenau and Toulouse in France and at Skalica and Kysuce in Slovakia.
Why the company says it is necessary
Schaeffler points to a combination of factors: weaker volumes in combustion-engine components, a delay in the ramp-up of electric vehicle production, and high labour and energy costs in Germany. The company’s own restructuring, completed in November 2024 after its merger with Vitesco, has not been enough to close the gap.
Chief executive Klaus Rosenfeld said the aim was to show that it is both possible and sensible to develop and manufacture in Germany and Europe in a way that is competitive over the long term, while pointing to humanoid robotics and defence as growth areas.
The programme is targeted to deliver around €300m of annual earnings improvement from 2030, against one-off expenses of about €480m, most of which will be provisioned this year. Implementation is scheduled mainly for 2027 and 2028, in consultation with works councils and under the company’s 2018 employment accord.
The solidarity contribution
Unusually, the company is asking its own workforce and management to share the burden. A solidarity contribution, including a temporary, voluntary pay reduction starting with the board of managing directors, is intended to limit further cuts.
That approach reflects the constraints of German industrial relations. Large-scale compulsory redundancies are difficult and expensive, so companies negotiate packages that trade pay and hours for job security. The risk is that the measures spread the pain without solving the underlying problem if volumes do not recover.
What it says about the European auto industry
Schaeffler is one of the largest suppliers in Europe, and its decision to cut deeper only two years after its last restructuring is a marker of how structural the downturn has become. Suppliers of components for combustion engines face a shrinking market as electric cars, which need fewer parts, take share.
At the same time, the electric market is growing more slowly than the industry planned, which leaves suppliers carrying capacity for two technologies at once. The companies that survive will be those that can shrink the old business fast enough to fund the new one.
For Germany, the cuts add to a growing list of industrial announcements that have unsettled politicians ahead of regional and federal electoral tests. The government has promised support for the sector, but the measures announced so far have focused on energy prices and permits rather than on the demand that determines whether plants have orders.
