Siemens has set up a €35 million fund for
the employees of BenQ mobile in Germany. The
company’s Managing Board is also waiving its
approved salary increase for one year to
contribute €5 million to the fund, which will
provide financial support and pay for employee
education and retraining. “If BenQ puts its
people on the street, we’ll take vigorous action
to help them,” said Klaus Kleinfeld, President
and CEO of Siemens AG. In addition, BenQ Mobile
employees will be treated as internal applicants
for the more than 2,000 current job openings at
Siemens in Germany and actively assisted in
finding new jobs.
“Our overall aim is to help protect the
employees of BenQ Mobile in Germany from the
immediate impact of losing their jobs. We
consider the actions of BenQ reprehensible, and
we’re going to do everything we can to help the
people affected,” said Kleinfeld. The
justification for the salary increase approved
by the Supervisory Board was explained once
again in detail by the Chairman of the
Supervisory Board a few days ago. In view of the
current situation, the Managing Board has
decided to contribute the amount of the increase
to the BenQ employee fund.
Siemens has been deeply disturbed by the news of
the threatened insolvency of BenQ Mobile in
Germany. The company’s previous decision to sell
its mobile phone activities to BenQ was the
solution with the greatest employee benefits.
From a strictly business point of view, there
were considerably more attractive options at the
time. To have closed the business would have
been substantially cheaper. The Taiwanese
company assured Siemens of its intentions to
operate and expand the German locations in the
future andpresented a credible plan for
accomplishing this. Siemens contributed some 600
patent families, allowed BenQ to use its brand
name for five years and provided substantial
financial support for a successful launch. It
now appears that BenQ did not carry out its
intentions with the seriousness with which these
were represented to Siemens. Kleinfeld: “The
suggestion that we have been prepared to accept
the bankruptcy of BenQ Mobile in Germany is pure
slander.”
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