The short-time work is planned for October, November and December and is to be registered with the Employment Service (AMS) in Innsbruck in the course of next week, managing director Holger König confirmed to the APA on Thursday an original report from the online magazine “dolomitenstadt.at”.
Liebherr employs a total of around 1,340 people in Lienz. A consultation has already been held to discuss the options for short-time work, it said regarding the measure, which the “Tiroler Tageszeitung” also reported on online. This was justified by the fact that the market for refrigerators had declined massively following the boom in the corona pandemic. It had “collapsed brutally”. “The household appliance industry is still in a difficult market environment,” said König. Due to the ongoing decline in demand, the company is still forced to adjust its planning accordingly. “At our production site in Lienz, we have already taken various necessary measures to adjust personnel capacities accordingly and reduce our inventory level,” it said.
Forecasts “force further measures”
The current forecasts would now force the company to take further measures. These would be decided in “close consultation between management, HR and the works council” at the Lienz site in order to overcome the challenges together, it was emphasized.
At the beginning of 2025, however, Liebherr expected the situation to ease because new production lines would start up. Therefore, they did not want to lose their workforce, but they were skeptical as to whether the short-time work application would be approved. There is currently not a single company in Austria where short-time work has been approved, especially since unemployment is comparatively low.
The company, however, intends to stick to its expansion plans in East Tyrol. The largest construction project since the opening started in September 2023. It included a new warehouse with a floor space of 18,000 square meters for finished appliances and an additional administration building with an area of 650 square meters. In addition, a new production line is to be built to increase capacity by 20 percent. This year, Liebherr plans to build around 250,000 refrigerators in East Tyrol.
