KTM Is Unable To Pay Salaries and Christmas Bonuses To Its Employees

KTM has found itself in a pretty rough place in recent weeks, with the company recently filing for insolvency. The brand somehow found itself 2.9 billion euros (around 3.03 billion USD) in debt, and obviously, this is by no means a good thing. Now, leading up to the announcement, there were quite a few telltale signs that things were looking bad for Team Orange.

For starters, KTM announced a “temporary closure” of its manufacturing facilities for two months in 2025 starting from January going through February. The decision was said to affect around 1,000 employees, who were told that they would not need to report to work once 2025 rolled around. All this came hot on the heels of some very poor sales figures and a massive drop in revenue.

With all that being said, it seems that KTM’s problems just keep getting worse, as now, less than two weeks away from Christmas, the company has apparently announced that it will not be able to pay its employees’ December salaries before Christmas.

Prior to the announcement, KTM promised that it would transfer 90 percent of December’s salaries to the employees. But now, for whatever reason, this will not happen. And so, more than 3,600 employees will celebrate Christmas feeling short-changed, possibly without enough food on the table, and with a gut-wrenching feeling of uncertainty.

It’s bad enough that KTM seems to be going under, but it’s even worse now that it seems as though they can’t be held to their word. Even the President of the Upper Austrian Chamber of Labor, Andreas Stangl, was quick to condemn KTM’s actions, insinuating that the once-shining Austrian manufacturer is no longer worthy of trust. 

"The November salaries, as well as the Christmas bonuses, were not paid. And now, even before Christmas, this news! There is simply no quality in the handshake between KTM’s management. We, as the Chamber of Labor, will decisively do everything we can to ensure that the employees receive the amounts claimed from the insolvency fund as soon as possible.” - Andreas Stangl, President of the Upper Austrian Chamber of Labor
Meanwhile, Mattighofen mayor Daniel Lang described the situation as “devastating,” and the trade unions GPA and PRO-GE are also concerned, as they should be.

In a joint statement, the unions said: “The employees are now paying the price for obviously wrong management decisions. It will certainly be necessary to examine how such a dramatic situation could have happened and who is responsible for it. We will now do everything we can to ensure that the employees quickly receive what they claim from the insolvency fund, and we will support them during these difficult days and weeks.”

As for the thousands of unpaid workers, well, KTM says that although it won’t be able to transfer the salaries before Christmas, it will do so at the end of the month, as has been common practice in the past. A lack of liquidity on the part of the company has been cited as the cause for delayed payments for now.

As shitty as the situation is at the moment, I can’t help but hope that KTM seriously gets its act together. This whole debacle has become so much bigger than we anticipated, and it sucks that so many workers and employees will have to pay the price for the poor decision making skills of upper management. Let’s hope that KTM at the very least makes good on its promise of paying its workers its wages—at least before the year draws to a close.