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As General Electric, respectively the GE Grid Solutions division, announced Friday afternoon, the Oberentfelden location will not be moved to Birr, but will be closed. 436 jobs would be lost at Oberentfelden.
In addition, there are the jobs of 126 temporary employees. According to information from the union, they too are losing their jobs. So a total of 562 jobs will disappear.
In Switzerland 57 positions would be maintained. These positions come primarily from the areas of R&D, compliance, commercial and services to support the installed base in Switzerland, writes GE.
In July, GE had told employees at the Oberentfelden site that they could move their jobs to the Birr site. This became known in union circles. GE justified the fact that this promise is not being implemented with a large expected decline in orders for 2021 – a decline of around 30 percent.
The company did not provide any information in the press release on whether the positions will move to France and other countries, as rumored. Again, it can be heard from union circles that a large part of the remaining orders will be moved from the Oberentfelden location to France.
This move to France met with a particularly great lack of understanding at Oberentfelden. In Switzerland, according to trade unionists, one is of the opinion that colleagues in France “can’t do it.” In other words, they lack the know-how and specialized knowledge necessary to carry out the rest of the orders. This assessment is based, among other things, on the fact that a project recently had to be relocated from France to Oberentfelden. “Because they didn’t make it in France.”
The decision is apparently not final yet. The measure is “for review” with the Group’s European works council. The company states: The final decision (…) will only be made when the consultation procedures of the European works council have been completed, as well as locally in Switzerland. This is expected by the end of the year.
The company wants to offer those affected by the reduction an internal job placement service. With comparable measures, more than 90 percent of employees would have found a new job at the end of their employment.
The reason for the renewed job cuts is the bleak future prospects in the market, especially in the area of ”gas-insulated switchgear”.
A new chapter is being written in the sad story since American giant General Electric took over the gas turbine business from French giant Alstom:
- In mid-2018, GE announced that 50 jobs would be cut at Oberentfelden. The remaining 500 would move to Birr in the spring of 2019 and the Oberentfelden location would be canceled.
- In December 2019, our newspaper revealed that GE had sold the area in Oberentfelden. To the transport company Dreier AG based in Suhr. The 500 jobs would now move to Birr, in the best case to Turgi.
- In February 2020 it was said: The plant in Oberentfelden is “working very well”, it is operating at full capacity and therefore will not be closed, and the workplaces will not be moved to Birr.
And now, this morning, at an employee information desk, it was explained that everything is different. Apparently the business is bad, the jobs could not be transferred to Birr, but they would be eliminated. From the employee side, the information was interpreted to mean that parts of the company could be relocated to France, India and China, possibly also to Italy.
