Voluntary temporary transfer: Audi lends employees to defense companies

While jobs in the auto industry are shaky, defense companies are looking for skilled workers. Audi is responding with a voluntary personnel exchange that will loan out engineers and quality experts. The basis is a specially concluded collective agreement.

Audi wants to hire employees into the defense industry. The voluntary project enables employees to work for other companies in Bavaria on a temporary basis, as the car manufacturer announced. This initially concerns the companies Diehl, Airbus, MBDA and KNDS, which are fully or partially active in armaments.

According to Audi, the campaign is a temporary regional deployment of personnel as part of temporary employment. The employees remain employed by Audi. According to a spokeswoman, the aim of the campaign is: "to expand employment prospects for employees, to specifically support the region's need for skilled workers and to actively shape the transformation of the industry."

Initially, the offer is aimed at indirect collective bargaining employees in Ingolstadt. “The target group is in particular engineers, quality engineers, project managers and workshop employees in technical development and quality assurance,” says Audi. The project has already been communicated internally. At the end of October, employees will have the opportunity to speak directly to the companies involved. The interest in the planned events is “extraordinarily great”.

According to IG Metall Bayern, the project goes back to a collective agreement concluded for this purpose in April 2026. “In some companies there is currently not enough work, in others there is a lack of skilled workers for the volume of orders,” says district manager Horst Ott. If such companies are close to each other, a temporary change could be a good option. “Because employees in the other company receive the same pay as before.” Ott also emphasizes that only employees who agree would be considered for such an assignment. “If they are rejected, they should not suffer any disadvantages.”