German companies could be forced to consider laying off workers next year, despite the job guarantees offered by the nation's top corporations, the head of the country's influential industry federation said in a Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa interview released Thursday.
With Germany bracing itself for what is expected to be a deep economic downturn next year, leading companies indicated at a meeting this month with German Chancellor Angela Merkel they would attempt to avoid large scale lay offs, reported dpa.
"This creates confidence" said Juergen Thumann, the president of the Federation of Germany Industry (BDI).
But he conceded that all companies would not be able to follow this course, telling dpa that the forecast contraction in economic growth meant that part of industry would be unable to escape job cuts.
"A drastic fall in the number of orders means several companies will be forced to cut their workforce," said Thumann.
His comments came as Merkel's government begins to piece together a possible new stimulus package, which could worth about 30 billion euros (42 billion dollars), to help the nation's economy weather the global economic slump.
Berlin has already set a raft of measures totalling about 31 billion euros to help ward off the global recession.
However, Berlin has made it clear that it does not plan to finalize the new package until after US president-elect Barack Obama unveiled his proposals to underpin growth in the world's biggest economy following his inauguration later next month.
Merkel is also planning to hold another meeting with top German industry leaders in January to discuss their offer of job guarantees.
In his interview with dpa, Thumann said that it was still too early to say how badly the global economic crisis would hit Germany.
However, he said what was important was that the international community gave fresh impetus to the currently stalled world trade talks and hammered out a new world trade agreement.