Oliver Zühlke took a break after presenting the plans for the new "Future Concept Germany" for the pharmaceutical and agrochemical group Bayer at the General Works Council meeting.

To get the message across.

"It is not a matter of course that one talks about growth in employment when one has talked about restructuring for years," says the chairman of the general works council, who is also deputy chairman of the supervisory board of the Dax group.

Jonas Jansen

Business correspondent in Düsseldorf.

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The employee representatives have wrested far-reaching commitments from the Management Board for investments in the German home locations.

Bayer will invest at least 2.2 billion euros in Germany in the coming years, most of it in the pharmaceuticals business.

The new general works agreement was presented to the employees in a video conference on Thursday.

Focus on Germany

"Germany is our home base and we have brought that back into the focus of management," says Zühlke in an interview with the FAZ. "This gives the employees here a new, long-term perspective.

For example, that we have confidence in future technologies at Bayer sites in Germany.” As recently as 2018, Bayer had announced a major austerity program, during which 12,000 jobs were cut, 4,500 of them in Germany.

Although there was an exclusion for operational redundancies in Germany until 2025, there was great uncertainty among the workforce.

In recent years, the focus has been more on other countries.

The expansion of cell and genetic engineering was recently concentrated on America and the new head of the agricultural division is also based in St. Louis, where the seed group Monsanto, which had been taken over, was previously based.

The 20-page concept for the future should calm people's minds, because it also gives a clear rejection of the speculation that has become louder in recent months that the company will be split into a pharmaceutical and an agricultural part.

“We are and will remain a Bavarian.

This is the first time it has been recorded so clearly in black and white on paper and signed by all board members,” says Zühlke.

Of the six board members, three do not have German as their mother tongue, and they too are clearly committed to the German locations.

Berlin will remain the headquarters for the pharmaceuticals division and Monheim for Crop Science.

"This is of great value to us," says Heike Hausfeld, Chairwoman of the Works Council for the Leverkusen site.

"This is an important commitment and the basic requirement for our future concept to be a success."

All board members have signed

In the agricultural division, 385 million euros are to flow into digitization and new production at the locations in Dormagen, Frankfurt am Main and Knapsack by 2026, as well as material investments of 300 million euros.

According to the future concept, the pharmaceutical division should receive a “significant part of the new hires” in research and development in Germany.

The focus is then on biotechnology with cell and gene therapy.

More than 1.4 billion euros are to be invested in the coming years at the pharmaceuticals division’s production sites in Bergkamen, Berlin, Leverkusen, Weimar and Wuppertal, and a further 120 million euros will flow into the Consumer Health division over the next four years, primarily for digitization and for a competence center in which marketing and sales concepts for Europe are to be developed.

"The future concept has a new quality," says Hausfeld.

"We have defined concrete investments for the locations." This would set up innovation centers at the locations and strengthen contact with universities and start-ups.

“It is important to us to retain the weight and position of the German locations.

We are convinced that we have competitive jobs and that we can create many more," says Hausfeld.

Develop more own products again

As part of the austerity program, Bayer also announced in 2018 that it would buy more research from outside – which the workforce viewed with concern.

The employees also expect more innovations from Germany from the new works agreement.

"We want to build and use more networks in cooperation," says Hausfeld.

"In this way, we want to develop further within the company in order to generate products and new jobs."

The fact is that Bayer made its last acquisitions in America, especially in cell and genetic engineering, because research there is much more advanced.

Of course, simply making more money available for German locations does not mean that there will also be more impetus in this country and that the right people will be found to develop innovations.

That is why the newly created competence centers are so important to the trade unionists, into which the largest part of the investment does not flow initially - which could, however, be expanded in the future.

"We need more planning security from politicians so that investments do not turn into risk capital," says Zühlke.

Zühlke, who started at Bayer in 1985, at that time with an apprenticeship as a chemical technician, will leave the Supervisory Board this year.

The mood among the workforce is likely to be generally good, as the good figures presented this week also mean higher bonuses again.

There is around 15 percent of an annual income for the employees covered by the collective bargaining agreement, executive employees get up to 30 percent - which is about three times as much as in the previous year.

In 2020, Bayer posted a loss of 10 billion euros due to high costs for the settlement surrounding the glyphosate dispute.

In 2021 there was now a profit of 1 billion euros again.