The electric car threatens 2,000 jobs in Seat

• Employment SEAT warns its workers that the electric car will reduce the assembly workforce in Martorell

• Electric car Seat Martorell wants to manufacture 500,000 urban electric cars from 2025

The transformation of the automotive industry towards the electric vehicle will eliminate factory staff

.

This is not new because it is well known that a battery-powered car does not have so many components, which simplifies its manufacturing process.

And the lower the complexity, the fewer hours of work will be needed to make each car.

Ergo, there is a surplus of personnel;

With an aggravating circumstance,

so decisions are made in Wolfsburg and Stuttgart (Germany), in Paris or Detroit (USA).

And in this negotiation, the parent country always wins.

Here is one of the problems of the Spanish subsidiaries of these multinationals present in Spain.

In the first it will make

, a

based on the

concept , the

and another version for

.

They would be the substitutes for the Seat Ibiza and Arona, VW Polo and T-Cross and the Skoda Fabia and Kamiq.

In addition, VW Navarra would make electric compact SUV models.

Seat Components

In this equation, Seat Components, which

, had the commitment that it would change the production of its manual gearboxes (which do not exist in an electric car) to

to supply the up to 850,000 electric cars that could get to make the two Spanish centers of the German group from 2026.

But the situation has changed

.

The German Volkswagen factory located in Kassel is out of work.

To alleviate this shortage, it would be awarded an engine for electric cars that is made in the Hungarian plant of the German group.

In order not to leave the Hungarians without this award, the promised propellant would be transferred to Seat Components, with which the Barcelona factory would be left without plan B before the arrival of the electric car and its staff would have a difficult time relocating.

XX Collective agreement

To this is added that Seat Martorell begins the negotiation of the 20th collective agreement, in which the company recognizes that

However, we are working to increase production volumes in the coming years and be able to partially offset this decrease.

To do this, we want to focus on increasing the volume of our current and future models.”

The

according to the unions is that, in addition to endangering the 1,200 employees of Seat Components,

.

"If an Arona needs 26 hours of work, these new products require only 13 hours," according to Matías Carnero, president of the SEAT works council.

“The management has to tell us how much is the surplus of personnel that the arrival of the electric car will bring, which is more than 2,000 people.”

Martorell has a workforce of around 8,000 workers.

Seat SA employs around 15,000 people in Spain.

The start of the manufacture of the three 100% electric models would be in mid-2025.

Seat explains that with early retirement and the new profiles that amount of employment will not be lost in net terms.

But he does not deny that there are jobs in the production chain that are amortized by the passage from the combustion car to the electric one.

The possible labor conflict comes at an uncomfortable time for the company that awaits the call for the automotive PERTE

to formalize these awards of electric models, in addition to

.

This could be in

they would be based on the platform for electric cars developed by Volkswagen, thanks to the agreement between the German and American groups to escalate costs.

The workers ask that Martorell receive more awards beyond these three small electric models and that the

.

For that, the Volkswagen group should invest more money to transform that line so that the SSP platform can reach the Barcelona plant, on which the German group will base all the battery-powered models of its general brands.

Stellantis, against the Labor Reform due to temporality

dropdown

The problem of not having decision-making centers in Spain makes Spanish factories hang on political decisions when it comes to attracting investment.

In this sense,

has reiterated on several occasions that the new Labor Reform that puts obstacles to temporary employment and company agreements does not benefit the group from awarding new products to the production centers of the Peninsula.

In addition, it drops how Morocco (they have a new factory in Kenitra) receives the group's investments with open arms.

Given this, the unions argue that «Stellantis, with its commitment to temporality to guarantee the award of models, manages to raise the average eventuality in the sector together with some other companies up to almost 15% (in some cases with entire shifts occupied only by people with a temporary contract) not being the case in other companies in the sector».

From the directors of the automobile multinationals with a factory in Spain, they explain that

, helped by the noise of politicians against the automobile, not only diesel.

For their part, the

argue that

. "

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more

• Electric cars

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