Bosch Works Council warns of job losses: Employee representation calls for a change of course for Germany's industry

The central works council of Bosch Mobility is increasing pressure on company management and politics. With a position paper to strengthen German locations and an announced nationwide day of action, the employee representation wants to ensure that manufacturing and development in Europe are more strongly secured in the future. According to the central works council, the body represents 74,000 employees at 40 locations in Germany.

The focus is less on the future of individual plants than on the question of which rules will decide in the future where investments, development, and production will take place in Europe—and whether suppliers will fall behind in international competition. The central works council ties a clear expectation to politics: it must change its course and align industrial policy goals and regulation more closely with market conditions.

“Made in EU” – not just a label, but a location lever

The core demand of the paper is binding “Made in EU” rules for manufacturing and development. Public funding and government contracts should, according to the employee representation, be more strongly tied to the actual creation of value in Europe. The crucial point is the clause that opposes symbolic location proofs: “Mere final assembly of imported finished parts” should not be sufficient to qualify as “Made in EU.”

Behind this demand lies an industrial policy lever: If public funds and contracts were more closely linked to European value creation, this could influence investment decisions—in favor of locations where not only assembly but also development and manufacturing take place. For the supplier industry, this would be particularly relevant from the works council’s perspective, as it provides a large part of the technical and economic substance of modern vehicles. The position paper quantifies the importance of suppliers at 75 percent of a vehicle’s value creation—and derives from this the claim not to let Europe’s industrial base shrink to interchangeable standard components.

The central works council links this approach with the goal of technological sovereignty: development and manufacturing, for example of safety systems or software, should not be given out of hand. For Bosch Mobility, as the mobility division of the Bosch Group focused on solutions for passenger and freight transport, this debate carries double weight—because decisions on regulation, funding policy, and location logic have a direct impact on the core of the business model.

Protest as a signal—and as a negotiation tool

To underline the demands, a nationwide day of action with mass demonstrations is already planned for next Monday. This is intended to make the conflict visible—not just as a workplace dispute, but as a signal to politics that, from the employees’ perspective, the transformation of drive technology without reliable competitive conditions can lead to job losses.

Bamberg: Job guarantee, negotiations—and a site in transition

The situation is particularly concrete at the Bamberg site. There, employees are still covered by a job guarantee until the end of next year, which is intended to protect against active job cuts. At the same time, negotiations about the future of the plant are ongoing. The number of employees is already declining, as positions are not being refilled according to the works council.

The development has been visible for years: At the beginning of the 2000s, around 10,000 people worked for Bosch in Bamberg; by 2018, the number had dropped to 7,300, and currently it is around 6,000. In Upper Franconia, in addition to components for diesel engines, Hybrion stacks are also produced—key components for electrolysis plants for hydrogen production. Bamberg thus exemplifies the balancing act that many industrial plants must manage: while part of traditional manufacturing comes under pressure, new business areas are to be built up without the site bleeding out during the transition phase.

“No longer competitive”: Criticism of rules and pace of transformation

Mario Gutmann, named in the context of the debate as a supervisory board member and works council head of Bosch Bamberg, rejects the interpretation that the downsizing is mainly a direct consequence of the exit from combustion engines. He describes the situation as a problem of competitiveness and points to what he sees as an unequal framework: strict EU rules and requirements affect European locations, while countries like the USA or China apply comparable restrictions less or differently. The assumption that there is no fixed date for a combustion engine phase-out in those countries is also cited as evidence that European companies are in an asymmetric competition.

The position paper therefore not only calls for an origin logic for “Made in EU,” but also for a “pragmatic transition path” in the move away from combustion engines. A rigid transition period until 2035 is criticized as the wrong approach. The works council argues less against transformation than against a pace and set of rules that could endanger investment and employment in Europe.

There is also the social dimension of the restructuring. For Bamberg, the continuation of partial retirement is named as central in order to make personnel changes socially acceptable at all. The job guarantee does provide time—but it does not answer the fundamental question of which products and skills should remain at the site in the long term.

It remains open whether politics and companies will follow suit

The direction of the central works council is clear: create pressure in the short term through protests, change the rules in the long term so that development and manufacturing remain attractive in Europe. Whether this will actually lead to concrete changes in funding criteria, public contracts, or the industrial policy approach to the drive transformation remains open.

For Bamberg, the situation remains doubly charged until then: a job guarantee provides short-term security, while negotiations about the time after that are ongoing. The conflict shows how closely location decisions, regulation, and social policy instruments are now intertwined—and how quickly transformation goals can become a question of trust for employees if the economic foundation does not keep up.