BERLIN - Premium carmaker BMW will cut several thousand jobs in Germany by the end of 2027 under a voluntary redundancy programme agreed with employee representatives, said a company spokesperson on July 29.The spokesperson added that the company and the works council had agreed on a severance programme targeting the administration and development divisions. Production operations are excluded.According to a person familiar with the matter, the total workforce is expected to shrink by around 8,000.A company source told AFP about 40,000 of BMW’s roughly 85,000 permanent German employees would receive the voluntary redundancy offers from October.BMW employs about 154,000 people worldwide and the offer would be open to German employees in desk-based roles, the source said.The plan had taken about six weeks to negotiate between the board and BMW’s works council, the source added.Suffering from slimmer margins from the sale of electric cars, US tariffs and above all intense Chinese competition, German carmakers have sought to cut overheads.Volkswagen is weighing up to 100,000 job cuts across its 10 brands and Mercedes-Benz has its own voluntary redundancy program.Deciding early on to maintain petrol and diesel options for its customers, BMW has so far been widely seen to have weathered the storm better than its peers, avoiding costly strategy changes at the same time as seeing its electric sales rise.But the carmaker issued a shock profit warning in June, saying that business in China was proving even worse than expected amid fierce competition and a sluggish economy.BMW’s vehicle deliveries in China were in 2025 already at their lowest level since 2017 and they fell 30 per cent year-on-year in the three months to June.Chief executive Milan Nedeljkovic subsequently said the automaker would accelerate and intensify ongoing cost-cutting efforts.In its 2026 annual report, BMW had already signalled a slight decline in employment levels. At BMW, a “slight” reduction is defined as up to 5 per cent of the workforce. REUTERS, AFP