The Basque wind turbine manufacturer Siemens Gamesa, in serious financial trouble for years, faces a second major adjustment since its merger in 2017 with the German giant’s wind assets. On this occasion, the reconversion will affect 4,100 jobs (17% of a total of 29,807 professionals) and will impact Spain with 430 layoffs (8.44% of the 5,093 jobs in the country). It will be the second most affected country, only behind Denmark and ahead of Germany.
Gamesa, wholly acquired last year by Siemens Energy, transferred the large numbers of the adjustment to the unions this Tuesday. Without identifying, however, the affected professionals or detailing the conditions under which they will leave the company. Now a negotiation phase begins between both parties to try to reach an agreement, with a key meeting of the employment table scheduled for July. In mid-May, EL PAÍS already announced that the completion of the layoffs was a matter of “weeks.”
“We have just started conversations; The outcome of the negotiations will only be clear at the end of the process,” says a company spokesperson. “Once we have discussed the details with all parties involved and know how many of the affected jobs can be absorbed by growth in other areas, we will announce the result.”
Siemens Gamesa’s activity in Spain extends across five autonomous communities, including factories and offices. From the renewable corporation they have advanced to the plants that the reconversion in Spain will focus on the latter – in many cases, due to synergies after the merger with Siemens Energy – and will leave the workforce of the industrial plants in Castilla y León, Cantabria untouched , Valencia, Galicia and Euskadi. The administrative and management area is distributed mainly in Madrid, Sarriguren (Navarra) and Zamudio (Bizkaia), where it has its headquarters. The most affected divisions may be the technology and services divisions, according to Clara Fernández, CC OO representative on the works council.
As in similar processes, Siemens Energy will try to internally relocate workers who do not fit into its wind subsidiary in other growth areas of the group based in the German city of Munich. Siemens Energy has three profitable divisions related to gas services, connections and energy transformations, such as those focused on hydrogen.
The company, on the other hand, intends to strengthen activities related to offshore wind, to the detriment of operations related to land-based wind turbines. The company’s idea, however, is that—far from falling—the number of employees remains stable. An apparent paradox that has an explanation: because other areas, such as the aforementioned wind offshorecontinue to grow at a good pace.
In a letter to employees, CEO Jochen Eickholt – who will leave the position in two months – emphasizes the need to adjust due to lower business volume, affected by repeated technical problems in the onshore turbines. 5.X and 4.X, the drop in demand in non-strategic markets and the need to reorganize the order book based exclusively on the profitability of the projects. “We will reduce complexities and eliminate redundancies in the organization,” the letter reads. A good part of the layoffs in Spain are linked to these synergies.
Denmark, the most affected country
The cut, in addition to Spain – where almost one in every five jobs is located worldwide – has more impact in other countries where Gamesa is active. In Denmark, the cut will affect 570 people, all of them—as in Spain—in offices. In Germany there will be 370 victims. The company has committed to making the snip “as traumatic as possible” for the workers who will leave.
However, Siemens Gamesa has informed workers’ representatives that the salvation of another 190 jobs in factories in Denmark and another 670 in Portugal will depend on the evolution of the market. That is, the volume of orders: the company has not sold a single land-based wind turbine for more than a year, with a commercial rhythm completely blocked by the aforementioned technical failures of the turbines.
Siemens Gamesa sources have indicated that Spain – with whose authorities it continues to negotiate lines of guarantees so that its activity continues to be viable – continues to be a “priority country” for the group. The previous labor restructuring, concluded in March 2023, led to 475 layoffs in Spain, out of a total of 2,000 dismissals in the group’s workforce, which has accumulated losses of 7.7 billion since the aforementioned merger in 2017. For this year, around Red numbers of about 2,000 million. The already long crisis of the wind turbine manufacturer has already claimed three CEOs. The fourth, debuting on August 1, will be Venod Philip.
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