Europe’s largest car parts supplier Bosch will spend a total of about €2bn on retraining some of its 400,000 staff to limit further job losses as the industry switches from combustion engines to electric technology.
The announcement by the German group comes after warnings that the EU’s target of phasing out petrol and diesel cars by 2035 could lead to hundreds of thousands of roles being axed on the continent.
The privately owned company, among the EU’s largest employers, has spent €1bn on programmes to reskill those working on legacy technologies over the past five years and plans to spend “a similar sum” over the next five years, its human resources chief Filiz Albrecht said.