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According to the German "Economic Weekly" reported that the BMW Group will cut 5700 employees' working hours, in order to reduce the group's spending costs.

BMW plans to reduce the working hours of its 5700 employees from 40 to 35 hours a week, saving 10 million to 14000 euros per person per year, or more than 100 million euros a year, according to people familiar with the matter. BMW declined to comment on the report, but admitted it was considering cutting workers' working hours.

If BMW Group reduces the working hours of its employees, BMW Group does not need to negotiate or negotiate with the union, as the employee contract clearly stipulates that working hours can be reduced when necessary.

According to media reports at the end of September, BMW CEO Chipze said at an internal meeting that he would maintain the balance of BMW's global workforce until the end of 2020 and would not take mandatory layoffs to reassure employees and avoid worries about losing their jobs. Currently, BMW Group has a total of 135000 employees worldwide.

Chipze also said that the executive branch will not create new jobs, and if employees retire or leave, they will not hire new people. At the same time, BMW will reduce the number of contract workers, and existing contractors will not renew their contracts after the contract expires. In addition, contract working hours have been reduced from 40 hours per week to 35 hours per week, and the proportion of employees' dividends has to be redetermined.

However, last month, Bloomberg quoted German "managers" as saying that BMW plans to cut 5000 to 6000 employees by the end of 2022, mainly from its headquarters in Munich, Germany, and the layoffs will be announced in December.

To some extent, it indicates that BMW's layoffs will be shelved and will remain relatively stable at least until the end of 2020. Of course, the plan can never keep up with the change.

But in any case, whether it is layoffs or reducing employees' working hours, it is BMW's cost-cutting plan. In March this year, BMW announced a cost-cutting plan of 12 billion euros to achieve a faster and more streamlined process structure to improve efficiency. In addition, the BMW Group also plans to eliminate some models and reduce research and development time by 1/3.

In the second quarter of this year, BMW's global cumulative sales reached 647000 vehicles, an increase of 1.5% over the same period last year, and its operating revenue also increased by 2.9% to 25.715 billion euros (about 198.18 billion yuan). However, due to BMW's increased investment in pure electric vehicles and self-driving technology, its expenditure costs also increased, with a profit before interest and tax of 2.201 billion euros (about 16.96 billion yuan). 19.6% lower than the same period last year Pre-tax profit also fell to 2.053 billion euros (15.82 billion yuan) from 2.866 billion euros (22.08 billion yuan) last year, while BMW Group's net profit was 1.48 billion euros (11.41 billion yuan), with profit margins falling to 6.5 percent from 8.6 percent in the same period last year. BMW expects pre-tax profits to fall sharply in 2019.

Although the layoff decision has been postponed, BMW's cost-cutting plan will continue because of the pressure of profit expectations.

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