AMS boss optimistic

New hope for laid-off Magna employees

Karl-Heinz Snobe, head of the Styrian Public Employment Service (AMS), is optimistic that many of the approximately 500 laid-off Magna employees will soon find a new job.

On Friday, the AMS will receive the early warning message about the imminent job cuts at Magna in Graz. "500 employees have been announced to us - according to our information, 100 of them are white-collar workers, the rest are blue-collar workers," explains regional managing director Karl-Heinz Snobe to the "Krone" newspaper. According to his estimates, the first redundancies will take effect at the beginning or middle of June, after the 30-day lockdown period has expired.

With a total of 12,500 vacancies on the Styrian labor market, he assumes that those affected will quickly find a job again. "In the production sector alone, there are currently 1,500 vacancies across Styria - in the greater Graz area, we certainly have a total of 2,500 interesting job offers for Magna employees in the system. So I am optimistic that those employees with the appropriate training will quickly find a job again."

He also assumes that a third of the Magna employees facing redundancy come from Slovenia and are therefore not part of the Styrian labor market. "Commuters have to register as unemployed in their home country."