IG Metall and works council want to join Volkswagen also reduce costs by sacrificing salaries in order to prevent plant closures and layoffs. This is envisaged in a separate future concept, which the employee representatives presented on Wednesday, one day before the next round of collective bargaining.
The overall concept enables labor costs to be reduced by around 1.5 billion euros, said IG Metall district manager Thorsten Gröger. “1.5 billion euros that we are putting on the negotiating table.”
In return, IG Metall and the works council led by works council boss Daniela Cavallo (49) are demanding guarantees for locations and employment. The Employment security terminated by VW in September, which previously excluded redundancies for operational reasons, must be reinstated – both for the six West German plants with 125,000 employees in Lower Saxony and Hesse and for the three locations in Saxony.
Specifically, it is offered that the next wage increase will be temporarily contributed to a future fund as working time and not paid out for the time being. This enables flexible reductions in working hours without reducing the workforce. The benchmark should be the most recent pilot agreement for the metal and electrical industry, which provides for an increase of a total of 5.1 percent in two stages by 2026.
The Crisis at Volkswagen has been going on for months: Because the core VW brand has become a need for restructuring, the group wants to Canceling billions in investments, shaving development and cutting thousands of additional jobs
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