A spokesman for plastics machinery manufacturer KraussMaffei Technologies (KM, Munich / Germany; www.kraussmaffei.com) has confirmed that the company plans to cut 200 of the 2,000 jobs at its Munich location. Employees will be offered an opportunity to switch voluntarily to a transfer organisation, where they will remain on the payroll for 12 months. Negotiations on this are apparently under way with the Works Council and the trade union. If insufficient employees take up this offer, the company would have to consider other measures.

Structural changes are apparently required because the order shortfall caused by the recession can no longer be managed through short-time working and giving workers time off to compensate for past overtime. KM expects 2010 to be a tough year. Although the company has not quantified its order intake, it claims it has not been as badly hit as its competitors. Nevertheless, it is clear that sales will be below EUR 1 bn in 2009 and 2010.

600 employees, mainly production workers, are currently working short-time but there are now plans to extend the short-time working arrangements to administrative staff.