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Scania has revealed that it will have to make significant reductions in the size of its global workforce, citing the serious reduction in demand for its products as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Scania president and chief executive Henrik Henriksson (pictured) admitted the company now has 5,000 more staff than needed.

“Our assessment is that it will take a long time before market demand reaches pre-crisis levels and we therefore need to adapt the organisation to the new situation already this year," he said. "These will be company-wide measures and formal notices of redundancies are not excluded. The measures also include parts of Scania that normally are not impacted by short-term changes in production volume.”

His statement highlighted a review of 1,000 head office white-collar jobs, an excess of staff capacity in the sales and service operation, and a reduction in R&D activity. The use of consultants was mentioned as an area of potential cost saving.

The employee representative on the board of directors, Lisa Lorentzon added: “As always at Scania, we will strive to minimise the effects for our employees, also in these difficult times. Among the white-collar unions, we fully advocate the continued disengagement of consultants. This requires transferring needed competence and skills to Scania’s permanent staff - which is part of our local collective agreement - in order to secure the company’s long-term survival.”

Scania (Great Britain) was unable to comment on how the UK workforce would be affected.

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