Bayer workers opt to share downturn pain

Leverkusen, Germany - In response to a sharp drop in demand for its polymer-based products, Bayer MaterialScience recently offered its 5800 employees in Germany an option under the country's kurtzarbeit scheme - whereby the government essentially pays for firms to offer employees short-time working arrangements rather than laying them off in times of business difficulty.

However, according to BMS head Patrick Thomas, the scheme is not totally fair as it affects some staff much more than others. Shift workers at a chemical plant, for instance, could lose their shift allowances, which could mean losing about 30% of their salary, he explained.

When BMS started talking to employees across its different sites everyone said 'we don¹t need this kurtzarbeit thing we don¹t need the government help. We will all happily reduce working hours reduce salary as long as everyone is treated the same,¹ Thomas reported. People working in the labs wanted to be treated the same as those on the production line with no discrimination against people working on lines that had been idled, he added.

By moving shift patterns around and other measures BMS came up with an arrangement whereby everybody was affected much more equally than under the government scheme. This, said Thomas, meant reducing the total salaries and the manhours for all the tariff workers by 6.7%. Meanwhile managers gave up their merit increases and their bonus schemes will also pay out significantly less.

"We have this concept at BMS one business one team so it doesn¹t matter which bit of the business is hurting everybody takes the pain equally, said Thomas. "I find it quite gratifying of you go to a site and say to 800 people there you are going to kurtzarbeit and they say no just treat us all the same. The union was somewhat surprised by the reaction of the workforce."