Porsche reportedly planning further job cuts of 5,000 positions by 2035

Negotiations with works council and IG Metall

According to the Porsche spokesperson, the management board presented "the current status of negotiations" on the future package at Wednesday's supervisory board meeting. "The supervisory board has pledged its support for this." According to the company's account, there is no agreement yet between the company, the works council, and the IG Metall trade union. Porsche is actually planning to announce the cost-saving program on Monday after a works meeting in Stuttgart.

Job cuts and cost reductions had already been initiated under Leiters' predecessor Oliver Blume. Among other things, the company had stopped its own battery cell production. According to the Bild report, Blume had bet too heavily on electric cars. Massive job cuts are also on the table at parent company Volkswagen: According to VW CEO Oliver Blume, 140,000 jobs are at risk due to cost-cutting measures. Whether plant closures are also planned initially remained unclear.

Background: Volkswagen also cutting massively

The planned additional cuts at Porsche show just how deep the crisis is that the sports car maker has fallen into due to weak demand in China and a sluggish e-transformation. While parent company Volkswagen has already been pursuing a comprehensive cost-cutting course for months, further staff reductions are now also being made at the profitable premium subsidiary. Industry observers see the doubling of the cost-saving program as an admission that the previous measures are not sufficient.

Porsche faces the challenge of simultaneously restoring profitability and avoiding further uncertainty among the workforce. The negotiations between the management board, works council, and IG Metall are considered difficult. If the special payments are capped and the Christmas bonus is cut, this would represent another cut for employees who had benefited from above-tariff payments in recent years.

Outlook on the further process

The timeline is ambitious: between 5,000 and 6,000 additional jobs are to be eliminated by 2035. With a workforce in the low five-digit range, this would represent a significant loss. At the same time, Leiters announced a fundamental overhaul of the product portfolio. What this means concretely for the model range and the Stuttgart location is currently still unclear and is likely to be the subject of the ongoing negotiations with the works council.