German giant Siemens ready for talks over mass lay-offs

Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-20 04:51:03|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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BERLIN, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- German industrial giant Siemens has said that it is ready for talks with German workers' representatives on its plan to cut around 6,900 jobs worldwide, news agency DPA reported on Sunday.

"I hope that the unions will find a way to go from protest to dialogue and that we can reach a balance of interests," said Siemens personnel chief Janina Kugel to the Tagesspiegel newspaper on Saturday.

There were several ways for the German engineering and electronics firm to reduce its staff without forced lay-offs, Kugel said, including offering severance pay, training and early retirement.

About half of the announced job cuts will be in Germany, where the company said it planned to shut down facilities in the eastern cities of Goerlitz and Leipzig, DPA said in its report.

There will also be redundancies at locations in Offenbach, Erfurt, Muellheim and Berlin.

Germany's biggest union, IG Metall, called the restructuring plans a "widely mounted attack on the employees".

There have been no negotiations between the management and the workers so far, according to the DPA report.

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