Employment Structure

The company pursues a flexible personnel-planning strategy in order to deal with production peaks and economic downturns, while at the same time protecting its permanent staff. If measures to reduce personnel costs become necessary, these are decided in close consultation with employee representatives.

WACKER regularly informs its employees of current trends within and outside of the Group that could affect business development. Employees receive timely, comprehensive information on material changes in operations, with the company observing its respective national and international duties of disclosure.

WACKER’s headcount decreased by 2.6 percent in 2020, while in the previous year it increased by 0.8 percent. German sites accounted for 70.7 percent of WACKER’s employees and international sites for 29.3 percent. As a manufacturing company, WACKER has a large contingent of industrial workers, at 47.9 percent (2019: 48.3 percent). About an eighth of its industrial workers are women (12.1 percent in the reporting period).

To mitigate the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, WACKER introduced short-time work in several production-related and administrative units in Germany in the second quarter of 2020. At certain times between April and December 2020, around 2,000 employees were working reduced hours at the Munich, Burghausen, Stetten and Nünchritz sites.

Shape the Future – WACKER’s Efficiency Program

In October 2020, as part of its Shape the Future efficiency program, the company and employee representatives reached an agreement on the framework for planned job cuts. By the end of 2022, some 1,200 jobs are to be eliminated groupwide in administrative units and in the non-operational functions of the business divisions. Around 1,000 of the job cuts are planned for Germany. The reduction in Germany will be implemented solely through voluntary and socially responsible measures, such as phased early retirement arrangements and severance agreements. Forced layoffs are explicitly excluded in Germany under this project.