(MENAFN- AFP) Unions reacted angrily Thursday to restructuring plans by German industrial conglomerate Siemens that are expected to cost the jobs of thousands of employees in its limping energy business.
The Munich-based group did not immediately release details of closed-door talks with workers after they ended in the early afternoon, but the Wall Street Journal reported that "as many as 4,000" positions could be slashed, citing sources familiar with the discussions.
Employee representatives have vowed to resist any layoffs, as they would follow on the heels of flourishing annual results for the sprawling group.
"Siemens must gradually ask itself, do we want to remain an integrated technology group, or is it only about pleasing shareholders" Juergen Wechsler, head of the powerful IG Metall union in Bavaria, told news agency DPA.
Chief executive Joe Kaeser warned last week that "painful cuts" would be announced at the works council meeting on Thursday, saying Siemens must "tackle structural issues in some individual businesses" -- even as it reported 11-percent growth in net profit for 2016-17, to 6.2 billion euros ($7.3 billion).
He added that he would try to "soften the blow" by reassigning or retraining workers.
The Munich-based group -- whose products range from trains to wind turbines to medical equipment -- has already announced some 6,000 job cuts in its wind power unit.
Falling prices in major markets like India and the US bore much of the blame for the woes at the division, which merged with Spain's Gamesa earlier this year, Siemens said in its fourth-quarter report.
Meanwhile, German weekly Manager Magazin reported that the firm's power and gas division, one of its largest with some 30,000 employees, could shutter 11 of its 23 sites worldwide.
Markets for the unit's products such as natural gas turbines were shrinking as a result of "global energy trends" away from fossil fuels, Siemens said.
"We will have to start a discussion of creative forms of resistance" if bosses press on with site closures and layoffs, IG Metall board member Juergen Kerner warned in an interview with WirtschaftsWoche magazine on Wednesday.
- 'Discontent and doubts' -
Many of the sites that could be on Kaeser's hit-list are in Germany's generally poorer eastern states, still not recovered from decades of communist mismanagement and an arduous reunification with the west since 1990.
Among them is the famous "Dynamowerk" in Berlin's Spandau district, where Siemens was founded in the early 20th century and which now employs 11,000 of its 351,000 workers.
Closing eastern sites "could stoke the discontent and the doubts" that helped far-right party Alternative for Germany into parliament with 12.6 percent of the vote in September elections, outgoing economy minister Brigitte Zypries wrote in a letter to Kaeser seen by Bild newspaper.
For its part, IG Metall accuses Siemens of being "irresponsible" by showing thousands of employees the door while the group as a whole is turning in healthy profits -- and by failing to consult closely with workers, as was the norm at big German conglomerates for decades.
The group laid off some 15,000 people in 2013, partly as a consequence of Germany's decision to abandon nuclear energy in favour of renewables.
Under Kaeser's tenure, whole divisions have been abandoned or sold off, including household appliances, telecoms networks and nuclear and solar energy.
Tearing up a 2008 agreement that ruled out layoffs short of an "existential crisis" at the firm "would disquiet colleagues in all of the divisions," union boss Kerner said, especially when "the group is doing well" overall.
Siemens workers don't see why they should suffer the fate of employees at its struggling major competitor General Electric.
The US firm announced Monday a restructuring of its own, with thousands of job cuts around the globe, as it narrows its focus to aeronautics, health and energy.
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