Car manufacturer Volkswagen is intervening in its six German factories. The German newspaper Handelsblatt reports this on Sunday and confirms the company itself to some extent. Volkswagen states that there is an agreement with the works council to allow employees born between 1956 and 1960 to take pre-retirement pension and to offer employees born in 1964 some form of part-time work. Naked layoffs are not possible until 2029, according to an earlier agreement.

The company itself expects that 900 employees will accept the pre-retirement proposal, and ‘several thousand’ will opt for part-time work. It does not give an exact figure of how many jobs can be canceled. According to the Reuters news agency, it concerns 3,000 to 4,000 jobs, the Handelsblatt states that it even concerns 5,000 jobs. There are currently 120,000 people working in the six German Volkswagen factories.

The cost of the layoffs would run into ‘hundreds of millions of euros’, sources say to Reuters. At the same time, the company is extending a hiring freeze that ran until the end of this quarter to the end of this year. Exceptions to this are possible when it comes to the development of the electric car, battery development or digitization. With the entire operation, Volkswagen also wants to free up space for the switch to the electric car.