Frankfurt/Main – The French tyre manufacturer Michelin wants to secure its five locations in Germany by 2012 with investments in the nine-figure number area. In return, its 5,600 employees in Germany will have to work 75 minutes longer per week without any extra pay, as the company announced in Frankfurt in Monday. The aim is to avoid any operations-based redundancies up to 2012. The company and IG BCE (the mining, chemicals and energy union) agreed on this "package for the future" after just under six months of negotiations. Michelin currently has manufacturing facilities in Karlsruhe, Homburg/Saar, Bad Kreuznach, Trier and Hallstadt near Bamberg and produces around 17 million tyres per year.

With its planned investments of 250 million euros, Michelin clearly confirms its commitment to Germany as a manufacturing location, emphasized Jürgen Eitel, head of Michelin responsible for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The German factories were among the best in the company in terms of productivity and quality but the competition from eastern Europe was great, he continued. In order to remain competitive, he said, the corporate management has imposed a stipulation on the local factories to the effect that they must increase their productivity by 30 per cent by the year 2010. "I think that that the pact offers a chance of staying in Germany for very a long time", said Eitel.

IG BCE district boss, Hans-Jürgen Patschicke, talked about hard but successful negotiations. The result, he said, would strengthen Germany as a manufacturing location. In other countries, he continued, Michelin employees were anxious about their jobs. This was why the German workforce did not show a negative attitude to the increase in working time to 38.75 hours per week, said Patschicke.

Michelin has been represented in Germany for 101 years. In 1931, the first tyre of the brand was manufactured in Karlsruhe. In Germany, the biggest tyre market in Europe, the family business last year had sales of over two billion euros – around one eighth of total world sales. According to the management, the workforce is to stay at the level of 5,000 to 5,600 employees until 2012. By then, 1,200 employees will have retired and therefore there are plans to offer many new jobs. In Bad Kreuznach in Rheinland-Pfalz, 150 new people will be taken on by next spring alone. The factories in Homburg/Saar and Bad Kreuznach account for 85 million euros and 70 million euros respectively, just under two thirds of the total.

Source: dpa/lsw