BASF workers to go on short-time

Ludwigshafen, Germany –  BASF SE is introducing short-time work for about 1,000 employees serving 20 production plants - mainly for pigments, intermediates, petrochemicals and inorganics - at its headquarters site in Ludwigshafen. The measure wil be phased in between June and September.

Working hours worked will be reduced by between 20 to 100% and for up to four months according to the circumstances at the individual plants, said BASF. However, all of the employees will receive around 90% of their net wage,  under short-time work compensation provided by the German government and a payment from BASF under the collective wage agreement for the chemical industry.

“Capacity utilisation rates at many plants have remained very low since the beginning of the year, and we do not expect any improvement over the summer months,” said Dr. Harald Schwager, BASF's HR director and head of its Ludwigshafen site.

“Short-time work is an appropriate measure to temporarily bridge the decline in orders," added Schwager. "We are also ... temporarily transferring employees to other units or using flexible time to respond to the decline in work volume. Without these measures, short-time work would have already been introduced for thousands of BASF employees in Ludwigshafen.”

BASF said it is also examining further possible measures in case business does not improve in the second half of the year. Currently, 5,200 employees from BASF Group companies at 19 sites in Europe are already working short time, including former Ciba sites.