Plant in East Tyrol

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Liebherr's application for short-time working for the plant in East Tyrol was rejected.

(Bild: Martin Oberbichler)

Last week, the household appliance manufacturer Liebherr submitted an application for short-time working for 960 employees at its site in Lienz in East Tyrol. This has now been rejected by the Public Employment Service!

The decision comes as no surprise. Both the company itself and Labor Minister Martin Kocher (ÖVP) had expressed skepticism in advance that the application would go through.

Slump in demand
Liebherr had justified the short-time working application with a massive slump in the market for refrigerators following the coronavirus pandemic. However, the company expected the situation to ease at the beginning of 2025 because new production lines would be starting up. The company therefore did not want to lose its workforce.

What the future holds for the workforce at the Lienz site is still unclear. The company now wants to take "measures to adjust capacity" and look for an "alternative solution", it said in a statement on Thursday morning. It is not yet clear what this might look like and whether it will involve job cuts.

However, Liebherr wants to keep all employees in the company, it was emphasized in a statement.

The reasoning of the AMS
Sabine Platzer-Werlberger, head of the Tyrolean AMS, explained the rejection to ORF that short-time work was intended for "unforeseeable, exogenous events". During the Corona period, it was a "defined crisis instrument". Liebherr was also unable to provide sufficient evidence that the economic problems had been resolved by the end of the year.

"Economically questionable"
Kocher recently said that short-time work was not intended to compensate for economic fluctuations. In addition, many companies are still looking for skilled workers. "Retaining them at companies that do not have enough orders for an indefinite period of time is economically questionable," he said.

The trade union, on the other hand, saw short-time work as a "suitable means", as the situation should improve at the beginning of the year and the workforce could be retained as a result.