Car giant Volkswagen intends to close at least three plants in Germany and cut tens of thousands of jobs, the leader of the firm’s works council told VW employees yesterday, prompting top executives to say VW had to make changes to stay competitive.
Leader of the Works Council, Daniela Cavallo said at an event in Wolfsburg, headquarters of VW that all the other VW plants in Germany will be downsized under the plan from management, while bosses were also planning an across-the-board pay cut.
But according to reports by the German News Service (delivered by dpa), Cavallo and other labour leaders at VW vowed fierce resistance to cutbacks, as the company’s executives argued that high costs at German plants make deep cuts necessary, but did not comment directly on reports of plant closures.
A top executive at the Volkswagen car brand, Thomas Schäfer, said: “We cannot continue as before. We are not productive enough at our German sites and our factory costs are currently 25 percent to 50 percent higher than we had planned. This means that individual German plants are twice as expensive as the competition.”
Schäfer and other VW executives, however, did not provide details about what cuts are needed or address Cavallo’s comments.
Cavallo issued a warning during her remarks: “I can only warn all board members and everyone at the top of the company-don’t mess with us, with the VW workforce,” she said to applause from employees in Wolfsburg.
The IG Metall trade union, which represents most of VW’s plant workers in Germany, also vowed to oppose any plant closures.
“This is a deep stab in the heart of the hard-working VW workforce,” said IG Metall’s Thorsten Gröger, the trade union’s district manager in the western state of Lower Saxony, where VW is based.
“We want to secure locations, capacity utilization and employment in the long term. If the management wants to herald the end of Germany, they must expect resistance that they cannot imagine!” said Gröger.
VW executive: ‘Situation is serious’
“Without comprehensive measures to regain competitiveness, we will not be able to afford significant investments in the future,” Volkswagen’s human resources chief, Gunnar Kilian said in the management statement.
Kilian did not provide any details about any specific cost-cutting measures the carmaker is considering.
“The fact is the situation is serious and the responsibility of the negotiating partners is enormous,” Kilian said, adding: “The discussion about the future of Volkswagen AG should first be conducted internally with our negotiating partners.”
Schäfer said that Volkswagen’s aim remains to increase the return on sales to 6.5% by 2026, which he contended is the only way to finance necessary future investments.
Cavallo: ‘No partial solutions’
Cavallo again called on Volkswagen bosses, yesterday, to present a vision for the future of VW instead of individual cost-cutting measures, saying: “With us, there will be no salami-slicing tactics. No partial solutions and no lazy compromises. We are looking for an overall package. Anything else will not work with us!”
The VW plant in Osnabrück, which recently lost a hoped-for follow-up order from Porsche, is particularly at risk of closure, according to the works council. Porsche is likewise a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group, which also owns Audi, Škoda, SEAT and other brands in addition to the core Volkswagen brand.
Cavallo also said that VW executives are also planning mass layoffs, with entire departments at risk of closure or relocation abroad.
“All German VW plants are affected by these plans. None of them are safe,” said Cavallo, without giving any further details.
Job security deal ended this year
VW employs around 120,000 people in Germany, around half of whom work at the brand’s headquarters and main plant in the northern German city of Wolfsburg.
The VW brand operates a total of 10 plants in Germany, six of which are in Lower Saxony, three in the eastern state of Saxony and one in the western state of Hesse.
In September, VW terminated a long-standing job security deal with labour unions that had been in place for more than 30 years. Layoffs are now possible from mid-2025.
Volkswagen has never closed a plant in Germany, and has not closed a plant anywhere in the world in more than three decades.
The September announcement was major news across Germany, where it has been seen as a troubling sign for the country’s economy as a whole.
Government urges protection for workers. Soon after the works council announcement, the German government urged Volkswagen to protect jobs.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz believed “possibly false decisions made in the past by management should not come at the expense of workers,” his spokesman said.
Executives from VW’s parent company are scheduled to meet labour negotiators from the IG Metall trade union on Wednesday for a second round of talks on a new collective bargaining deal.
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At an initial meeting in September, Volkswagen flatly rejected IG Metall’s demands for a 7 percent pay increase and insisted on savings instead.
But Cavallo said on Monday that VW is now demanding a 10 percent pay cut and no other pay raises for the next two years.
“We expect Volkswagen and its board of management to outline viable concepts for the future at the negotiating table, instead of fantasies of cutbacks, where the employer side has so far presented little more than empty phrases,” said IG Metall’s Gröger.
Meanwhile, German metalworkers and others employed at metal and electrical manufacturers will stage strikes across the country today amid sector-wide collective bargaining talks, according to the IG Metall trade union.
The strikes, each lasting several hours, are to begin just after midnight (2300 GMT) at individual companies, the trade union announced yesterday.
The collective bargaining talks cover wages and other conditions for around 3.9 million workers in Germany employed in the automotive and other manufacturing industries.
A prohibition on strikes by the trade union during initial talks is set to expire today.
IG Metall said that industry leaders must improve wage offers, especially given that high inflation in recent years has undercut worker earnings.
Christiane Benner of IG Metall said: “The employers’ meagre offer fails to recognize the seriousness of the situation. Our 3.9 million colleagues in the sector need more money.”
In the negotiations, IG Metall is demanding 7 percent pay increases within the next year for workers. The employers, meanwhile, have offered 3.6 percent over a period of 27 months, with the first raises to arrive in July 2025.
The companies point to weak production figures and a lack of orders. Night-time protests are planned at the Volkswagen plant in Osnabrück, where the new IG Metall collective bargaining representative Nadine Boguslawski will be speaking.
The plant threatened with closure is not covered by VW’s in-house collective bargaining agreement, but is part of the regional sector-wide collective agreement instead.
