DaimlerChrysler Plans Personnel Agency

A senior executive at DaimlerChrysler has said the company plans to create a spin-off firm that will serve as a personnel agency for the carmaker. Daimler personnel chairman Günther Fleig told the Stuttgarter Zeitung newspaper that the company, under the working name Job-Start, would be created by 2005 and would be responsible for finding jobs within the company for Daimler trainees as well as retraining existing employees to work in different Daimler jobs as the need arises. However, a cornerstone of the plan – one that would require workers to move to any of the company’s factories where their services are needed – drew criticism from Daimler’s employee association. "If implemented, the consequence of these plans would be that every future manufacturing employee would become a modern working nomad, having to move from factory to factory," said worker’s council chairman Erich Klemm. But Daimler’s Fleig said the plan would lead to better employee training as well as making employees more attractive to the company for longer due to retraining opportunities.