The Bosch Brake Systems Factory in Mirków near Wrocław intends to lay off 60 people, which amounts to another factory in Poland looking to reduce staff in the near term.
At the end of last year, Bosch announced that it intended to lay off over 8,000 people employed in a dozen or so factories around the world. As it turns out, this will also apply to Poland. Sixty people employed in the Mirków plant are to lose their jobs, with the company already reporting its intention to carry out group layoffs at the labor office.
“In accordance with the law, Bosch has notified the District Labor Office of its intention to conduct group layoffs at its plant in Mirków near Wrocław. A total of 60 employees are to be covered by group layoffs,” said Arkadiusz Łukaszów, spokesman for the District Labor Office in Wrocław, in an interview with Money.pl.
Bosch has plants in five cities in Poland: Warsaw, Wrocław, Łódź, Rzeszów, and Goleniów. At the end of the year, it employed over 9,700 people in the country.
A wave of layoffs in Poland
According to journalists, the wave of group layoffs in Poland is gaining momentum. In January and February of this year, group layoffs were reported covering a total of 14,800 thousand employees. This means an increase of almost one-third compared to last year. In turn, almost 7,700 people lost their jobs.
Examples include layoffs at Poczta Polska, the Rolling Bearing Factory in Kraśnik, PKP Cargo, and the Amica factories.
Where does this phenomenon come from? For years, Poland was attractive to investors because of its low labor costs. However, the increase in Polish wages has made it often profitable for companies to move production to much cheaper countries, such as Tunisia.
“Another reason for the cuts is technological progress. Automation, artificial intelligence, changes in the employment model, and demographic data will cause the supply of labor to fall in the coming years,” experts from Personnel Service point out. “Some of the cuts, especially those at Poczta Polska and PKP Cargo, are the result of the government’s desire to slim down state-owned giants and try to make them able to compete with private companies,” according to the Business Insider site.
