MAN STEYR

With majority of MAN employees at Steyr, Austria, voting against the plant takeover by WSA, the risk of closure and with it the loss of thousands of jobs has got bigger.

- Bhushan Mhapralkar & Milan Olsansky

MAN has announced that a majority of employees at its Steyr manufacturing site in Austria voted against plans by WSA Beteiligungs GmbH to continue operations, in-turn compelling it to start plans to close it post an effort to once again renegotiate the social plan. With a long history of manufacture associated, the Steyr plant of MAN produces cabs for special vehicles and crew cabs for MAN’s production network. The plant acquired by MAN in 1990 from Steyr, which built traditional ‘bonneted’ trucks in post WWII period, including the distinctive cab over Steyr 90 Series that was introduced in 1968, and the 91 and 92 Series that followed, has a long and proud history attached to it. With currently only one commercial vehicle topic in Austria making headlines in all the major daily newspapers – the planned sale or the closure of the MAN site in Steyr – it should not take much time to understand the situation. Founded in 1864 as Josef und Franz Werndl and Company to manufacture rifles, and in 1894 to produce bicycles, the MAN site at Steyr where the first truck under ‘Steyr’ brand was produced in 1919 is currently known to contribute to the building of MAN TGX, voted as the International Truck of the Year 2021.