While Bosch Türkiye posted net sales of €5.5 billion in 2024—a 25 percent increase over the previous year—the company simultaneously notified the Ministry of Labor of its plan to eliminate 1,400 jobs at its Bursa plant.
Under the German industrial giant’s plan, 1,150 production workers are to be laid off by the end of 2027, and 250 white-collar employees by the end of 2030. This represents approximately 20 percent of the plant’s total workforce of 7,500. According to official 2024 figures, Bosch Türkiye employs 18,000 workers across the country in a number of factories.
A Bosch worker speaking to the daily Evrensel drew attention to the fact that the company’s claim of “downsizing” amounts to boosting profitability at the expense of workers, stating: “The factory even ran on May Day... We were still trying to figure out who’d be on the layoff list when we saw Bosch had posted an ad to hire contract workers. When profit is on the line, have they ever cared about anyone’s pain?”
Bosch CEO Stefan Hartung, in remarks to Reuters in April 2026, argued that structural measures, including job cuts, were necessary to “improve its competitive position”. He described 2026 as a “year of progress” and announced that the company was targeting an operating profit margin of between 4 and 6 percent, compared with 2 percent in 2025.
The workers know who will pay the price for this profitability target. Those at the Bursa plant—one of Turkey’s largest automotive supplier facilities—are among the countless workers being sacrificed to the global restructuring programme of the auto industry.
Bosch is far from an isolated case. Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume announced in March 2026 that plans to eliminate 50,000 positions in Germany were being expanded, while Nissan announced the layoff of 900 workers in Europe. According to the European Association of Automotive Suppliers (CLEPA), 350,000 jobs in the sector are at risk by 2030.
Bosch’s then-CEO Volkmar Denner had already warned in 2021 that the transition to electric vehicles (EVs) could mean nine out of every ten workers worldwide who produce certain components would lose their jobs.
The shift to EVs is being cited as the trigger for this assault. But the driving force behind it is the profit motive. Because EVs require far less labour than internal combustion engine vehicles, corporations are planning to carry out this transition by wiping out the jobs of millions. Global EV sales are expected to reach 35 million by 2030, and this transformation poses a direct threat to workers in internal combustion engine parts production.
Mass layoffs simultaneously cut costs and drive up share values: Bosch’s own target margin for 2026, presented to its investors, grows in proportion to the number of workers being thrown out of work.
At the Bursa factory, initial talks between management and the Bursa Branch No. 1 of the Türk Metal union have reportedly concluded. The union has not even issued a statement, let alone organised any resistance. The first priority of the union bureaucrats, who function as the company’s labour police, is to suppress any independent resistance by workers.
This reality is expressed most clearly by the same Bosch worker speaking to Evrensel, who said, “We work constant overtime. We hand over our overtime pay to the state as taxes. And now we’re waiting to be put out the door like sheep being sent to slaughter. When everyone tries to save their own skin, it doesn’t work. When we act this way, we need to see that the rope is being tightened around our own necks.”
Türk Metal, Turkey’s largest union with approximately 285,000 members, has built its record on years of sellout contracts and violence against militant workers. During the 2015 “Metal Storm” rebellion, approximately 20,000 workers rose up against Türk Metal, occupying factories at Ford, Renault, and TOFAŞ (Fiat) and establishing independent action committees — a historical lesson that concretely demonstrates why it is necessary today to organise independently of the union bureaucracy.
The situation in Germany is no different. The works council under the domination of IG Metall has sided with management and is itself overseeing the layoffs. However, Bosch workers have launched an open rebellion against both the management and IG Metall. At the end of February, 10,000 workers demonstrated outside Bosch’s headquarters in Gerlingen near Stuttgart against the plan to destroy 22,000 jobs. At the Bosch plant in Schwäbisch Gmünd, workers led by Mustafa Simsek, who opposed the layoffs, were barred from standing on their own opposition slate in the works council elections on March 11.
The Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi in Türkiye, together with its sister party the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei in Germany, calls on Bosch workers to unite their forces against the layoff attack in both countries.
To organize this fightback, independent rank-and-file committees must be established at all Bosch factories, independent from Türk Metal and IG Metall. The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) was founded precisely for this purpose: to organize the international unity of the working class by overcoming national borders and trade union bureaucracy. Such a struggle will inspire countless workers across Europe and internationally who are fighting to defend their jobs, their living conditions, and their futures against the escalating assault of the capitalist oligarchy.
Workers must reject the claim that corporations have the “right” to carry out layoffs. It is the collective labour of workers that sustains the auto industry and the entire economy; workers have the right to defend their jobs.
The fact that the interests of the corporations conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population demonstrates the necessity of nationalizing the auto industry and other key industries under workers’ control, and reorganizing the economy in accordance with the needs of human beings rather than private profit. This means fighting for workers’ power and international socialism.
Building the unity of Bosch workers in Türkiye and Germany—who face the same capitalist assault—and repelling the planned layoffs requires the construction of new rank-and-file organisations based on the perspective of international class struggle. Contact us to organise this fight together with the IWA-RFC.