Walkouts Halt Mercedes Production

BERLIN July 17, 2004; The AP reported that thousands of DaimlerChrysler workers walked off the job Saturday, extending protests against the automaker's threats to cut jobs in Germany if employees don't accept steps to cut labor costs.

Some 14,500 workers took part in stoppages at two Mercedes plants near the company's German base at Stuttgart, halting production of some 1,000 vehicles at the Untertuerkheim plant alone, employee representatives said.

DaimlerChrysler workers across Germany staged walkouts and protest rallies Thursday, prompting an appeal by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder for employees and management to end the dispute, though he said he would not get involved.

DaimlerChrysler chief executive Juergen Schrempp was quoted Saturday as saying he expects an accord soon.

"I am confident that we will have a solution shortly," he said in an interview for the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. "We are in constructive negotiations. But we don't want to discuss publicly what we have achieved so far."

DaimlerChrysler says labor costs at its plant in Sindelfingen, near its German base at Stuttgart, are higher than at another German factory in Bremen. The company has threatened to move production of future Mercedes-Benz C-class model cars to Bremen and South Africa unless it gets $620 million in annual savings at Sindelfingen.

One of DaimlerChrysler's main targets is to cut the five minutes of paid break time Sindelfingen workers accumulate every hour under the local contract. They won the break time in a 1973 strike. Much of it is now banked and used for meetings with supervisors or work team members.

The struggle over labor costs at DaimlerChrysler's plants are part of a pattern by German industry to press workers for concessions, particularly in the form of longer hours.

Electronics and engineering giant Siemens AG last month won an agreement from workers at a phone repair facility in northwestern Germany to work 40 hours instead of 35 for no added pay to avoid seeing 2,000 jobs moved to lower-wage Hungary.

General Motors Europe said Thursday it needs to save $124 million across the continent, saying only competitiveness on cost could secure jobs.