For many people in our country, the new year 2024 begins the same way the old one ended: with a continued fight for their own survival. For most it is “just” a fight for economic survival. But this too is difficult and dangerous enough.
For example, another 1,000 employees of the construction giant Liebherr from Biberach in Swabia are now worried about their jobs. The company has applied for short-time work for them for nine months until September 2024. The crisis in construction is to blame for this.
Strictly speaking, Liebherr does not earn its money from construction itself, but from the manufacture of excavators, cranes and other heavy construction machinery that is needed on a daily basis. But the crisis in the construction industry is now affecting not only the gold prospectors, but also the shovel suppliers.
From boom to crisis: The order situation in construction has deteriorated dramatically
With its production sites in India and Spain, Liebherr is one of the world‘s largest manufacturers of tower cranes. They are both developed and manufactured in our own factories. This is how 1,630 employees earn their money at the Biberach location. 1,000 of them are affected by the application for short-time work.
They are not the first, as Liebherr had previously registered 1,350 employees at the Ochsenhausen location in Baden-Württemberg for short-time work. It is initially planned until March 31, 2024. The different lengths of short-time work are due to the different levels of utilization of the individual plants.
We hope that the affected employees can return to normal work quickly. But there is a great danger that this will only remain a pious wish, because the German construction industry is in a deep crisis. There is a lull in orders because interest rates are so high, while at the same time the costs of energy and raw materials are rising.
Hardly any company can really thrive in such an unfriendly environment. The year 2024, which has just begun, could easily have more unpleasant news of this kind in store for us.
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