Word: bmw
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...BMW has also driven some hard bargains with its workforce. It began to back away from rigid German working hours in the late 1980s, when it opened a new plant in Regensburg to produce the 3-series. Its goal even then was to decouple the union-regulated workweek from the amount of time its factory was in operation. Management made flexible working hours a condition of its investment in the plant. The demand infuriated the powerful German autoworkers union, IG Metall, but the syndicate had little choice. "Without these restrictions we wouldn't have come up with these solutions...
...BMW gained particular concessions from its workers because Leipzig is in formerly communist eastern Germany, where unemployment has been about double the western German level and wages have lagged. Under the negotiated agreement, BMW doesn't pay higher rates for Saturday work in Leipzig, and employees put in on average two more hours a week than in western German BMW plants. Moreover, about half the 5,000 workers in Leipzig are not on BMW's staff; they either work for suppliers such as Faurecia or are so-called lease workers employed by specialized agencies and used by BMW when needed...
Union representatives generally rate BMW a good employer, and they characterize overall relations with management as good. The feeling is mutual. "German law is better than its reputation, and so are the unions," says Leipzig plant director Peter Claussen. Still, the use of so many lease workers in Leipzig is a sore point. Jens Köhler, the workers' main representative in Leipzig, reckons that lease workers receive about two-thirds the monthly pay and fewer benefits than colleagues who are BMW staffers. Calculated on an annual basis, once Christmas bonuses and profit sharing are included, lease workers are paid only...
...Putting BMW on a more efficient footing at home has enabled it to expand its product line in all directions. Over the past decade, it has evolved from a group with six model families--with the 3-, 5- and 7-series cars accounting for the vast majority of sales--to one with 11 model families grouped in three distinct brands, BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce. Three new model families are in the works, including a luxury sports car. The Mini, a remnant of the otherwise disastrous 1994 Rover acquisition, has far exceeded all expectations, and BMW is expanding its production...
...BMW's critics say its product-line expansion hasn't solved all its growth challenges or given it much protection from the increasingly competitive luxury segment. Helmut Becker, an auto consultant and formerly BMW's chief economist, says the idea behind the failed Rover deal--to turn the firm into a two-brand company, one for the mass market and one a premium brand--was a smart one, since it would have enabled BMW to spread the huge cost of new-car development over a far bigger group. "BMW's main weakness is that life is getting ever narrower...