Written by Yang Guang Editor|Yu Outstanding Products|Automobile Sankei
63-year-old Zeng Qinghong was anxious.
The chairman, who is in charge of nearly 100,000 employees of GAC, could no longer suppress his inner dissatisfaction at an event, and said to the audience almost with anger:
"What is the purpose of the business? It's profit, and what is profit for, it's to contribute to society, pay taxes and provide jobs. But what about now? are laying off employees, including GAC has also laid off a lot. ”
Although the last sentence was deleted in the official report later, in fact, many car companies, including GAC, still can't hide the real situation of the wave of shutdowns and layoffs since the beginning of this year, even if you are an overseas giant such as GM, Volkswagen, and Honda.
In the context of the price war but little effect, the front-line employees finally carried everything and became the first to be "targeted".
According to incomplete statistics, the number of layoffs in the automotive industry in the first quarter of this year alone has exceeded 30,000.
And even if it is not laid off, many riotous operations of enterprises under the involution are also endless, such as the 896 work system of the CATL era (8 in the morning and 9 in the evening, 6 days a week) has recently caused huge controversy.
In the words of a grassroots employee, when the situation is good, it can be warm like home, but once the situation turns bad, some of the practices of car companies are extremely chilling.
Many front-line workers have been driven to a dead end.
NO.1
[ The face of all beings in the car market under the wave of layoffs ]
After learning that he was included in the list of non-renewals, Forrest Gump (pseudonym), who had just worked at Guangqi Honda for three years, did not have time to adjust his emotions, but hurriedly submitted several resumes on the Internet.
He said he was lucky because he managed to avoid last year's wave of layoffs.
In 2023, Guangqi Honda laid off about 900 employees, most of whom were dispatched workers, due to the continuous decline in sales. A veteran employee told him that this was the first time in the company's 25-year history that there had been such a large-scale layoff.
In May this year, according to a number of media reports, Guangqi Honda will lay off about 1,700 employees again, which accounts for 14% of the company's total headcount.
On the other side, Dongfeng Honda's employees are also anxiously waiting for the judgment of fate.
Although no formal notice of layoffs has been issued, the company's state of rest and shutdown this year still makes many employees feel anxious and tormented, especially the collective shutdown of the three major factories after the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, which is not a good signal in the eyes of many employees.
It is reported that Dongfeng Honda has begun to interview some employees whose three-year contracts have expired on June 11 and will not renew them.
An old employee sighed, "(layoffs) are a matter of time, sales are unlikely to go up, and the company can't stand it now." ”
In mid-May, an internal notice from FAW-Volkswagen was exposed, which read: "FAW-Volkswagen is in the last and only window of transformation, and we have no way out except to fight against the water, and all of us are determined to live to death."
Subsequently, FAW-Volkswagen Foshan Branch started personnel optimization, and because more than 700 people were still difficult to continue to arrange work, 565 people with the lowest performance ranking were dismissed from their posts after the expiration of the labor contract, and certain economic compensation was given in accordance with relevant laws and regulations.
It is understood that because this is the first time that the Foshan branch has carried out such a large-scale "layoff" since its operation, it has even used local government resources to give relevant work support.
On April 15, Tesla CEO Elon Musk issued an all-staff letter saying that the company would lay off 10% of its workforce worldwide, which would involve more than 14,000 employees.
In addition to layoffs, the suspension of production is also a portrayal of many car companies.
According to the media, SAIC-GM plans to take advantage of the high temperature holiday to let the production line employees take more holidays for 2-3 months, although the former has refuted the rumors, but considering the cumulative sales of 199,000 in the first five months, a year-on-year decline of 44.25% of the report card, and the total production capacity of the four major production bases of 1.9 million. Obviously, SAIC-GM's capacity utilization rate is not high enough.
Just a few days ago, VOYAH's new SUV will be reproduced at Dongfeng Nissan's Yunfeng plant, which was originally the exclusive production base of Dongfeng Nissan's pure electric model Ariya, but in view of the poor sales of Ariya, transferring production capacity to brother units within the group is also another "self-help".
NO.2
[ Those are all kinds of messes and messes ]
In this wave of layoffs, even the ideal of the first brother of the new force camp has not been spared.
After the May Day holiday, Li Auto started personnel optimization on the grounds of "reducing costs and increasing efficiency", involving more than 5,600 employees, and the compensation standard was "N+1".
Due to the large number of people, some media reported that in order to prevent possible overreaction from employees, Ideal even strengthened security measures in front of the head office.
However, what is interesting is that just a month later, Ideal began to recall some of the layoffs in key positions.
It is reported that due to the previous layoffs affecting the testing and development of new products, some R&D personnel have returned to their posts one after another, but these employees no longer enjoy the compensation negotiated before, and their contracts are directly renewed, and they do not need to go through the probationary period and other processes.
Ever heard of an employee rushing to ask to be laid off? This happened to Guang himself, because the compensation was too much.
Since Guangben provides a "N+2+1.8" compensation plan for departing employees, it has also attracted many old employees to sign up, and many people hope to take this opportunity to get hundreds of thousands of compensation and then "retire" early.
Compared with those who openly talk about layoffs, some companies secretly make employees feel unhappy.
In May of this year, hundreds of Cariad employees in China received an internal email from the company's HR department, which contained two programming quizzes.
Many employees believe that on the surface, this seems to be a survey of the company's employees' R&D programming capabilities, but in fact, it is making preliminary preparations for layoffs.
According to an internal document released by the Volkswagen Group, Volkswagen is setting up a performance program called "KI 10" for all its companies, aiming to reduce fixed costs and personnel costs by 20% over three years.
Of course, there are also people who recruit against the trend.
In order to achieve the goal of delivering more than 10,000 in a single month, Xiaomi Auto recently announced that it will open a double-shift production model, for which Xiaomi is also recruiting a large number of workers, and has offered a monthly salary of more than 10,000 and a generous salary of 13 salaries throughout the year.
In addition, NIO, which has just released its second brand Ledao, and Geely, which has a good momentum recently, have also started the recruitment mode.
NO.3
[ Final Thoughts ]
Prices have dropped, policies have come out, and auto shows have opened, but sales have not improved much.
From January to May this year, the growth rate of the domestic passenger car market was only 3.9%, in the words of a senior media person, when a number of car companies tried their best to achieve breakthrough growth, front-line employees finally became the target of fighting.
"Enterprises can roll, but people also have to live."
When industry problems evolve into social problems, we might as well ask ourselves, is it a bit of a cart before the horse?