If the Volkswagen workforce in Wolfsburg meets the works meeting, this is always a mixture of folklore, class struggle and debate about the business figures. So also on Tuesday morning. In front of Hall 11 of the VW stemwerk, an converted electrolli “ID Buzz” is ready, from whose loading space employees are serving coffee. Inside there is the well-known VW currywurst. Before Christmas, the works council and management literally went to the Gurgel at such meetings. The struggle for job cuts was omnipresent. And even now the savings determined the program, as participants report. That was the agreement with which the management and IG Metall ended their big dispute in December. CFO Arno Antlitz had recently delivered a first indication of how VW will advance on the way there to submit the numbers for the first quarter. Since the end of 2023, the base year for all calculations, the number of active employees has been reduced by 7,000. 2000 jobs alone were dismantled in the first quarter of the current year. 20,000 withdrawals from the company have already been “contractually fixed”, he says in his speech to the workforce on Tuesday morning. That means: With the employees, binding agreements about their departure from the company were made. Kilian speaks of “measurable progress” and an accelerated transformation. Even in the environment of those managers who had actually pushed even harder cuts, there is talk of a good intermediate stand on Tuesday. However, it is also clear: In order to achieve the goal by 2030, contracts with 15,000 other employees are still missing. They too should go with severance payments or use instruments such as partial retirement. Most recently, VW had expanded the offers for partial retirement to the birth year 1968. According to the company, employees will soon also be given an offer that was born in 1969. With the savings, the group primarily wants to stabilize its chronically reduced trunk brand VW. In the first quarter, its return had dropped to only 0.5 percent due to many special effects. David Powels, CFO of the brand, emphasizes at the works meeting that the current vehicles are well received by customers. There is no reason for the all-clear: “We have to work on our structural problems, including: too high investments, low returns on electric vehicles and too high break-even point,” he says in his speech. The threshold is the “break-even”, where costs and sales revenue are the same and from which a company can make a profit. “There is no more space for ‘goes’ – every set screw that we optimize brings us closer to our goal,” says Powels in Hall 11. More on the topic of the works council, the savings had agreed – under the premise that they are socially acceptable and there are no discharge. The plan in which factory should be built from now on which cars are to be built, the employee representatives have with them. At the same time, they indicate what problems the renovation brings with it, for example in the Wolfsburg main plant. There, the Golf compact car, which suffers from falling sales, is to be deducted and moved to the plant in Mexico. The electrical variants of the golf and the small SUV T-Roc should provide new utilization in a few years. But in the transitional period, the production numbers at the location will decrease significantly. “At times not a four-day week, no absurd scenario” works council chief Daniela Cavallo says that the situation can quickly become very difficult. “From 2027, the temporary four-day week is not a absurd scenario here,” she says in her speech at the company meeting in the main plant. If only 28 instead of 35 hours a week is “in terms of”, the workforce has to use all options to bridge the time. The most effective instrument is working time accounts with which – to put it simply – could be converted. But to do this, the work has to go well – and there can be no question about that at the moment. “There are always any systems, parts are missing, the whole factory has been pulled across, nothing is from one cast here,” says the works council chief cavallo’s point of view, the problems are also a consequence of the same savings with which management wants to make the company more profitable. Processes no longer ran smoothly, with the result that, for example, machines failed. The reality on the hall floor “often resembles the states of a screwdriver in the back yard,” she says. Management, on the other hand, wants to keep the pressure high. In the first quarter, it can be heard, the factory costs per vehicle in Wolfsburg fell by ten percent compared to last year. In order to achieve the year -round goal, a further ten percentage point would have to follow.
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