Scania Expects to Rehire 500 in Europe

In Europe, the first signs of an economic recovery are seeing Scania re-employ 500 workers in its European production plants. This is the first sign of increased economic activity from any of the truck manufacturers based in Europe.

“In response to the continued recovery in global demand, we need to increase our workforce in order to handle a higher production rate during the third quarter,” said Anders Nielsen, Scania Executive Vice President and Head of Production and Logistics.

“We used the period of low production capacity utilisation to take steps to improve our methods and ways of working. The improvements that our employees have developed will result in a significant improvement of productivity.”

Since late 2008, the number of employees in Scania’s production network has decreased by about 3000, including 2000 fixed term temporary employees whose contracts were not renewed. The rest of the decrease was due to a freeze on replacement recruitment resulting from retirements, etc. ?

“The production increase that we are planning cannot be handled within the framework of the part of our flexibility agreement that allows weekly working time to be increased by five hours. Out of respect for our employees, increased overtime is not a good solution either. This is why we are also choosing to take advantage of the option in the flexibility agreement to hire up to 20 percent of production employees on fixed term temporary contracts,” Anders said.

The need for rehiring is greatest at Scania’s component workshops located in Sweden, which will continue to provide certain back-up deliveries of engine, axle and gearbox parts to production units in Brazil. About 300 of the 500 jobs are in Sweden, and the others at final assembly plants for Scania trucks in the Netherlands and France. ??The fixed term temporary employees whose contracts were not renewed in late 2008 and in 2009 have priority in Scania’s recruitment. To date, about a hundred of these employees have been rehired by component workshops in Södertälje, Sweden.

A vast majority of those who were offered jobs have agreed to be rehired. They will be employed on fixed term temporary contracts that run for six months and can be extended by another six months and then converted to permanent employment.

“It is encouraging that so many people are showing continued confidence in Scania as an employer. At the same time, it is a major advantage to be able to recruit employees with previous experience of Scania’s working methods,” Anders said.

Leave a Reply

Send this to a friend