It was the longest negotiating marathon in the history of the Volkswagen Group. IG Metall and management struggled for around 70 hours to find a solution to the dispute over job cuts, locations and wage cuts. They negotiated for several nights, interrupted only by short breaks to sleep, before talk of a “rapprochement” was discussed for the first time on Friday morning. In the afternoon, the Presidium of the Supervisory Board got together, which includes Lower Saxony’s Prime Minister Stephan Weil (SPD), works council boss Daniela Cavallo and the spokesmen for the shareholder families, Wolfgang Porsche and Hans Michel Piëch. In the evening the breakthrough came: Like VW and IG Metall As they announced in two separate press conferences, they have reached a compromise that provides for significant savings on the one hand and redundancies for operational reasons up to 2030 on the other Accordingly, 35,000 jobs are to be cut, through instruments such as partial retirement and severance pay programs in a socially acceptable manner. The union has pushed through the idea of a solidarity fund into which wage increases are temporarily paid. The money is intended to help reduce working hours when locations are underutilized. “Painful contributions from employees” The result shows “that changes at Volkswagen against the will of the workforce are doomed to fail,” said the union’s negotiator, Thorsten Gröger. in Hanover. “It is with great responsibility that we have now put together a package that includes painful contributions from the employees, but at the same time creates prospects for the workforce.” The company said that the agreement had set a “decisive course for the future.” Europe’s largest The car company announced in September that it wanted to drastically tighten its efficiency programs in order to respond to competition and weak demand. There had already been steps in this direction after the diesel scandal. At that time, VW wanted to cut around 23,000 jobs in Germany, but from the management’s perspective, this was not sufficient. Binding agreements have now been concluded to reduce costs, it was said on Friday. At the same time, the capacity of the factories will be reduced by a total of around 730,000 vehicles, which is roughly equivalent to a large factory like Wolfsburg. The locations are currently poorly utilized. This puts a strain on returns. The union had always ruled out closing entire locations. But at least VW no longer wants to produce in two comparatively small plants in the future. A buyer is to be sought for the factory in Osnabrück. The “Gläserne Manufaktur” in Dresden could be converted into a center for semiconductor technology and autonomous driving with local partners. Things are going particularly hard for the electric car factory in Zwickau, which is selling the ID.3 and Cupra Born compact cars to Wolfsburg. In the future, only one Audi model will remain there. Zwickau is intended to compensate for losses. The locations in Lower Saxony, the workforce in the east suspects, will enjoy greater protection from the federal state involved in the group. Emden can expect more volume for the ID.4 electric city off-road vehicle. Wolfsburg is also likely to take over some of the vehicles from Zwickau. In addition, from 2029 onwards, the factory will produce several electric models on a new technical platform based on the planned electric Golf. But the VW Group’s headquarters are also threatened with major upheavals, as production of the Golf combustion engine model is to be relocated to Mexico from 2027. Both VW and the union emphasized that the environment is changing rapidly. We are seeing more and more protectionist tendencies, both in relation to America and China, said Gröger from IG Metall. The group emphasized that it had to invest in future models and needed long-term savings to achieve this. Specifically, the agreement with the union is intended to reduce earnings by more than 15 billion euros per year in the medium term.More on the topicThe core of the discussions revolved around a new in-house tariff for around 120,000 employees of Volkswagen AG, an organizational superstructure of the group with locations in Lower Saxony and a components factory in Baunatal, Hesse. IG Metall had demanded a wage increase of seven percent, the group a flat-rate reduction of ten percent. Now the key data of the area tariff for the metal and electrical industry are essentially adopted. It envisages an increase of five percent, but the increase will initially not go to the employees, but to the future fund. In order to continue to have leverage against layoffs in the future, the union has negotiated the following: If there is no follow-up agreement for the employment guarantee after 2030, VW has committed to paying out one billion euros to employees, according to IG Metall.
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