Just one month ago, the IG Metall trade union and the works council at ZF organized nationwide protests, involving 12,000 employees, against planned job cuts. Now union officials are planning the cuts together with the ZF executive.<\/p>\n
4,500 ZF employees protest in Schweinfurt (July 29, 2025) [Photo by IGM Schweinfurt]<\/p>\n
While ZF workers demonstrated their readiness to fight for their jobs, the protests merely served as leverage for the works council and IG Metall to become involved in the development of the restructuring program.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the sidelines of a supervisory board meeting,\u201d reported Wirtschaftswoche, the ZF works council led by Achim Dietrich and IG Metall, whose district official in the state of Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg, Barbara Resch, is deputy chair of the ZF supervisory board, drafted a document together with the company executive. The grandly named \u201cAlliance for Competitiveness and Job Security\u201d is due to develop proposals by the end of September.<\/p>\n
Anyone familiar with IG Metall knows that workers will foot the bill for more than doubling the company\u2019s profit rate in the wake of the crisis.<\/p>\n
ZF CEO Holger Klein had already initiated far-reaching cuts last year. The company is suffering from stagnating orders, a hesitant transition to electro-mobility, and the US tariffs. Since the beginning of 2024, 11,200 of more than 168,000 full-time company jobs have already been cut worldwide, including 5,700 of the more than 54,000-strong workforce in Germany. In addition, partial retirement agreements have been agreed for a further 4,700 full-time posts in Germany, along with employees retiring as planned. Even so, this is not enough.<\/p>\n
The ZF executive has plans to spin off or even sell the division for electric and hybrid passenger motors, the so-called \u201cElectric Mobility Division,\u201d which employs nearly 30,000 people, almost exclusively in Germany. Klein did not rule out layoffs for operational reasons and increased the pressure once again at the beginning of August.<\/p>\n
In the first half of 2025, ZF generated \u20ac19.7 billion in revenue, or 10 percent less than in the same period last year. However, the main reason for this decline was the spin-off of the axle assembly division into the joint venture ZF Foxconn. Although earnings before interest and taxes increased from \u20ac780 million last year to \u20ac874 million, there was still a loss of \u20ac195 million. ZF CFO Michael Frick said the company would still be in the red at the end of the year. Last year, the company reported a loss of over \u20ac1 billion, following a profit of \u20ac126 million in 2023.<\/p>\n
The attacks on jobs and wages that are now being worked out are intended not only to avoid losses, but also to boost profits. The ZF board has set a central target that each factory must achieve a profit margin of at least 10 percent. If this target is not met, closure or sale is imminent.<\/p>\n
The profit rate currently stands at 4.4 percent in the first half of 2025. In the previous year, it was just 3.5 percent. The company, Germany\u2019s second-largest auto supplier after Bosch, is now threatening to close not only its drive division plants, but also older plants with a high degree of specialization and comparatively low profit margins.<\/p>\n
Workers at the company headquarters in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, and especially in Schweinfurt and Saarbr\u00fccken, fear massive cuts. Around 8,600 people work in Schweinfurt, around 5,900 of them in \u201cDivision E.\u201d The local works council chairman, Oliver Moll, said at the end of July that up to 4,000 jobs could be lost. In Saarbr\u00fccken, more than half of the 8,500 jobs could go if parts of production are relocated to Hungary as planned by the board. No plant is exempt from the downsizing plans.<\/p>\n
In the end, \u201cit will not be possible without extensive concessions from employees, IG Metall, and works councils,\u201d declared Wirtschaftswoche. A first sign of surrender by IGM and the company\u2019s works councils is the reduction in working hours for 5,500 employees in Schweinfurt, which takes effect immediately and will last until January 31, 2026. Employees will work only 32.5 hours per week without compensation. They had already done so between the beginning of December 2024 and the end of June 2025. According to works council chairman Moll, this saved the company around \u20ac20 million.<\/p>\n
ZF, however, is planning to save billions, not just a few million. It is already clear how the IGM and works council bureaucrats intend to push through these massive cuts. The likely assurance that the \u201cDivision E\u201d drive division will remain within the company and the waiver of \u201credundancies for operational reasons,\u201d including promises to ensure non-closure of production locations, will be accompanied by massive job cuts and wage reductions.<\/p>\n
Management and IG Metall have always attached great importance to the fact that ZF is owned by the Zeppelin Foundation of the city of Friedrichshafen and is not at the mercy of aggressive investment funds on the stock market.<\/p>\n
Now, however, it is becoming clear that ZF is subject to the same capitalist laws as all other corporations. The workforce faces the same attacks as their colleagues at Volkswagen, Mercedes, Bosch and every other car manufacturer and supplier. The corporate management style, which until recently was emphatically \u201cfamily-oriented,\u201d is being abandoned and adapted to the necessities of brutal global competition. This is because the goal of the Zeppelin Foundation of the City of Friedrichshafen is, in addition to \u201cexclusively charitable and non-profit purposes,\u201d also the \u201cpreservation of the basic assets and the resulting dividend distributions,\u201d as stated on Wikipedia.<\/p>\n
The \u201cpreservation of the basic assets\u201d now means that other methods and mechanisms are being introduced. The first sign is the departure of two managers from \u201cDivision E,\u201d as reported by Wirtschaftswoche at the beginning of the week. Markus Schwabe, who was head of the Electrified Drive Technology business unit at ZF, left the company at the end of August after 23 years. And Julian Fieres, \u201cchief strategist of Division E,\u201d who recently participated in workshops with ZF supervisory board members on the future of Division E, is leaving ZF at the end of November.<\/p>\n