BUDAPEST, March 11 (Reuters) - A Hungarian unit of General Electric (GE.N) will shorten the work week of thousands of its workers to avoid layoffs, the company said on Wednesday.
GE Lighting, one of multiple GE sub-divisions that employ a total of 14,500 people in Hungary, said it would phase in the shorter workweek over the course of this month for about 40 percent of its assembly line employees, spread across 8 factories.
“Hungary is a strategic production centre for GE Lighting,” Phil Marshall, regional chief of the company’s Consumer & Industrial division, said in a statement.
“Amid the fall in orders that the deepening economic crisis caused, the four-day workweek is crucial in preserving the jobs of our employees,” Marshall said. Other major manufacturers have announced similar measures in Hungary recently. The Hungarian unit of German premium carmaker Audi (NSUG.DE) (VOWG.DE) told a local daily on Tuesday that it would halt production for three weeks in August to save jobs. Hungary’s gross domestic product is expected to contract by 3.5 percent this year, followed by a 0.5 percent decrease in output in 2010, according to the National Bank of Hungary.
In the fourth quarter of 2008, the GDP shrank by 2.3 percent, according to data earlier on Wednesday. The figure is a revision of an earlier estimate of 2.0 percent.
Reporting by Marton Dunai; editing by Elaine Hardcastle
