In the dispute over savings plans Volkswagen Lower Saxony’s Prime Minister Stephan Weil (65, SPD) called on VW management and the employees to come together quickly for talks. After a phase of public debate, both sides now have to come together at the table to discuss solutions for more competitiveness at the group, said Weil after a conversation 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 the management, also of the employee interest group: to start speaking to each other in plain language very quickly,” said Weil.
The Prime Minister, who also sits on the VW supervisory board, reiterated that he does not expect any factory closures at VW. “We clearly expect that at the end of these discussions solutions will have been found that will make the discussion about locations unnecessary,” said the SPD politician.
VW and IG Metall The day before, they had announced that they would bring forward the collective bargaining round that was due to take place in the fall and would also want to negotiate the new savings plans. According to the union, 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. “So far it has always been possible to reach common results between the board and the workforce and I don’t know why that won’t work this time.” Lower Saxony wants to support the talks. The country holds 20 percent of the voting rights in the VW Group.
Ex-VW boss Diess praises Blume’s austerity measures
Meanwhile, the former VW boss announced Herbert Diess (65) his successor Oliver Blume (56) backing for the new austerity measures in Wolfsburg. The tough cuts announced by VW are inevitable, he said in two interviews with the magazine “Stern” and “Wirtschaftswoche”. Europe’s largest car manufacturer must now do its homework, improve productivity and increase efficiency. “These are topics that have been put off for a long time,” said Diess in “Stern”.
Volkswagen had announced that it would significantly tighten austerity measures at the core VW brand. Redundancies and factory closures for operational reasons are no longer excluded.
The job security that has been in place for 30 years has been terminated.
“It is a new situation for VW and also a breach of a taboo,” admitted Diess in “Wirtschaftswoche”. Diess was at the top of the group until August 2022. “It will now be a horse cure for Volkswagen, but one that will be good for the company.” Because the productivity of most German VW plants is not enough to compensate for the high wage costs.
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By canceling the job guarantee yesterday, trust had been broken, said the deputy chairman of the Emden works council, Herbert de Vries, after the conversation with Weil. He said that the Emden works council supported Weil’s course. “We have to come to the table together.” The workforce also relies on the support of the Prime Minister. The aim now is to calm the situation and allay the fears of the workforce. “We will definitely fight for every job.”
Weil said the idea that VW would be tariff-free in the future was unrealistic. Co-determination and cooperation were important basic rules that would have made the car manufacturer successful. “That’s why I assume that collective agreements will also be part of an overall solution. I can’t imagine anything else,” he said.
VW is the most important employer in East Frisia
Around 8,000 employees work at Volkswagen in Emden. The VW site is the most important industrial employer in the region. For the group, the factory 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 converted the factory during ongoing operations into a plant purely for electric car production – the first plant in Lower Saxony and the second location in Germany to Zwickau. According to its own information, the group 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 SUV ID.4 has been built in Emden since May 2022. Last but not least, the cancellation of the purchase bonus for electric cars in Germany at the end of 2023 caused demand to collapse. The Emden car factory was therefore not working to capacity recently.
“If electromobility gets off to a better start and we have the right models, then we have to be able to satisfy the market afterwards,” said de Vries. “A factory closure won’t help us.” In addition to Emden and the main plant in Wolfsburg, there are also VW factories in Hanover, Salzgitter, Kassel, Zwickau, Chemnitz, Dresden, Osnabrück and Braunschweig. In Lower Saxony alone, more than 100,000 people are employed by VW.