In the crisis at VW, Lower Saxony’s head of government is relying on cooperation between management and employees. Meanwhile, the board is getting backing for its austerity measures from a former boss.
In the dispute over the savings plans at Volkswagen, Lower Saxony’s Prime Minister Stephan Weil (SPD) has called on VW management and the employee side to come together for talks as soon as possible. After a phase of public debate, both sides must now sit down together to discuss solutions for greater competitiveness at the company, said Weil after a meeting with the VW works council at the plant in Emden, East Frisia.
“This is the clear expectation that the state of Lower Saxony now has of management, and also of the employee representatives: to start speaking frankly to each other very quickly,” said Weil.
The Prime Minister, who also sits on the VW Supervisory Board, reiterated that he does not expect any plant closures at VW. “We have the clear expectation that at the end of these talks, solutions will have been found that will make the discussion about locations unnecessary,” said the SPD politician.
VW and IG Metall had announced the day before that they would bring forward the upcoming wage negotiations in the fall and also negotiate the new savings plans. According to the union, the talks could begin this month.
Weil previously spoke for almost an hour at the VW plant in Emden with around 40 representatives of the works council and the IG Metall union about the current situation. “You can clearly feel that the events since the beginning of last week have caused great concern at Volkswagen, for example here at the site,” said Weil. VW has experienced many difficult situations in its history. “Up to now, we have always managed to reach common results between the board of directors and the workforce and I don’t know why that shouldn’t work this time.” Lower Saxony wants to support the talks. The state holds 20 percent of the voting rights in the VW Group.
Former VW boss Diess praises Blume’s austerity measures
Meanwhile, former VW boss Herbert Diess backed his successor Oliver Blume for the new austerity measures in Wolfsburg. The tough cuts announced by VW are unavoidable, he said in two interviews with the magazine “Stern” and “Wirtschaftswoche”. Europe’s largest carmaker must now do its homework, improve productivity and increase efficiency. “These are issues that have been put off for a long time,” Diess said in the “Stern” newspaper.
Volkswagen had announced that it would significantly tighten its austerity measures at its core VW brand. Redundancies and plant closures are no longer ruled out. The job security that has been in place for 30 years has been terminated.
“It is a new situation for VW, and also a taboo break,” Diess admitted in the “Wirtschaftswoche”. Diess was at the helm of the group until August 2022. “It will now be a drastic cure for Volkswagen, but one that will do the company good.” Because the productivity of most German VW plants is not enough to offset the high wage costs.
By cancelling the job guarantee yesterday, trust was broken, said the deputy chairman of the Emden works council, Herbert de Vries, after the meeting with Weil. He said that the Emden works council supported Weil’s course. “We have to come together at the table.” But the workforce is also counting on the support of the Prime Minister. The focus now has to calm the situation and allay the workforce’s fears. “We will definitely fight for every job.”
Weil said that the idea that VW would be free of collective agreements in the future was unrealistic. Co-determination and cooperation were important basic principles that had also determined the car manufacturer’s success. “That’s why I assume that collective agreements will be part of an overall solution. I can’t imagine anything else,” he said.
VW most important employer in East Frisia
Around 8,000 people work at Volkswagen in Emden. The VW site is the most important industrial employer in the region. For the group, the plant in East Frisia, where cars have been built for 60 years, is an important location for the ramp-up of electromobility.
In recent years, VW has converted the factory into a pure electric car production plant while it was still in operation – the first plant in Lower Saxony and the second location in Germany after Zwickau. The group says it has invested more than one billion euros in Emden since 2020 for new production capacities.
Last summer, VW began series production of the ID.7 electric sedan in Emden. The smaller ID.4 SUV has been built in Emden since May 2022. Not least, the cancellation of the purchase premium for electric cars in Germany at the end of 2023 had caused demand to collapse. The Emden car factory has therefore also not been operating at full capacity recently.
“When electromobility gets going better and we have the right models, we must be able to satisfy the market afterwards,” said de Vries. “Closing the factory won’t help us.” In addition to Emden and the main plant in Wolfsburg, VW also has factories in Hanover, Salzgitter, Kassel, Zwickau, Chemnitz, Dresden, Osnabrück and Braunschweig. In Lower Saxony alone, more than 100,000 people are employed by VW.
Source: Stern
