Striking Volkswagen workers halted production across Germany on Monday in protest against planned cost cuts and the first-ever plant closures in the car giant’s home country.
The two-hour work stoppages, organised by the IG Metall union on Monday morning, were the first at the company since 2018 and were scheduled to be repeated in every shift during the day.
Even one strike shift disruption, the union said, is enough to slow down production on several hundred vehicles at a time at its main plant in Wolfsburg. Beyond Wolfsburg, further strikes took place or are scheduled this week in nearby Hanover, Emden and Braunschweig – as well as the eastern city of Zwickau, VW’s EV-only plant.
IG Metall has vowed to step up to 24-hour strikes unless the next round of pay talks on December 9 ends in a deal.
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“If necessary this will be one of the toughest conflicts that Volkswagen has ever seen,” said Mr Thorsten Gröger, IG Metall district manager for Lower Saxony, to crowds outside the main production plant in Wolfsburg. “We do not want this conflict, but we will continue as long as the management board focuses only on cuts and redundancies instead of other perspectives.”
VW chief executive Oliver Blume has said the firm is facing huge overcapacity in Germany and production costs “often twice as high as the average of our [other] European locations”.
After three rounds of pay talks ended without agreement, VW remains determined to push through 10 per cent wage cuts and has set aside €900 million in its accounts for likely payouts among its 140,000 employees in Germany.
For works council head Daniela Cavallo, VW “crossed a red line” by floating plant closures and allowing its self-imposed redundancy ban to lapse.
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“We are not available for plant closures and mass redundancies. They have to give us a sign so we can make progress on December 9,” she said.
Union leaders argue that management has failed to implement workable reform proposals and fallen behind in its transition to electric vehicles.
Like other European car companies, VW is struggling in a shrinking European market. While one in four new vehicles sold in Germany come from the wider VW stable (including Audi and Porsche), sales as a whole are down two million annually since 2019.
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At the same time, tough Asian competition has seen the market share of Volkswagen’s core brands – Volkswagen, Skoda and Seat – drop to just 11 per cent in Europe annually. Simultaneously VW’s Chinese market cash cow is melting away, with weak demand adding to the company’s uncertain future. The core VW group remains profitable, though forecasts for 2024 have been cut from 6.5 to two per cent.
Striking VW Wolfsburg engineers said on Monday the mood in the plant was “shitty”. “No one knows what the future looks like for us,” said Stefan, a 52 year-old engineer.
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