The designated VW boss Herbert Diess was once brought by the Porsche clan to break the power of the union. The employee representatives are now even benefiting from his rise to the top.
VW works council chief Bernd Osterloh (archive)
Thursday, 12.04.2018
11:15 clock
This is how careers are being taken at VW in Wolfsburg: with Herbert Diess, the manager who has come is the trade union stronghold Volkswagen to grind, probably all the way up – and with the blessing of Works Council Chairman Bernd Osterloh. For the Wolfsburg compromise, however, the special power of the employees is secured. In any case, the situation before the decision in the VW Supervisory Board dar. Its meeting was apparently brought forward from Friday to Thursday.
The Personality Gunnar Kilian is the clearest signal. The Osterloh confidant is to become the new personnel director. He would replace in office Karlheinz Blessing, a longtime IG Metaller, who was once for the legendary union leader Franz Steinkühler worked, later became SPD general secretary and steelworks manager in the Saarland. So far, so normal in the co-determined corporation.
But Kilian is a different caliber: He was not just any trade union-minded manager, but Secretary General of the Group Works Council. Thus, Osterloh could face Dass practically twice, personally as works council and over his former employee, who in the future sits on the board.
The countervailing power in the works council
Gunnar Kilian, still speaker of the Volkswagen works council
But the most important guarantor of the influence of the works council is still the works council itself. Bernd Osterloh has four decades of experience in Wolfsburg and has been leading the committee since 2005. At that time he moved for the case that had fallen in the bribery scandal Klaus Volkert after.
Osterloh has been asked several times whether he does not want to become a member of the executive board himself – not completely unusual in German industry. For example, at RWE this was the case; in the steel industry, employees have a right of veto for the labor director, in any case, after the statutory Montan co-determination. Railway and post office have also appointed trade union bosses to personnel directors.
But Osterloh refused; In his case that would probably be a loss of power. Because as the highest representative of employees with his experience and networking, not least with his beefy appearance, he can confront the top managers hard and also corner.
With Herbert Diess he came several times violently together, up to a supervisory board meeting last year, which boycotted the whole employee bank with Osterloh. The ultimate demand, which accused the breach of contract must be gone, is passé. Wondering only who has tamed whom.
The co-manager
The works council made a particular splash in 2014 by absorbing the management’s demand for savings of five billion euros. “We can do that without external consultants the best”, Osterloh rejected the dreaded visits of McKinsey – and handed over its own savings program with suggestions of employees on 400 pages. Whether site selection, model policy or future technologies – the works council thinks strategically.
Osterloh is also a member of the supervisory boards of the Volkswagen Group, the umbrella holding Porsche SE, the subsidiaries Skoda, Seat and Volkswagen Truck & Bus. And as a works council, he has at least a salary at the level of a head of department – 200,000 € annual fixed salary plus some years lush bonus – can be assured. At present, he at least temporarily refrains from doing so in order to protect the executives in an infidelity case.
The tribune of the people
DPA / Volkswagen
Works meeting in Wolfsburg
In addition to the suit carrier Osterloh, who challenges the managers in the competition for the higher level of expertise, there is also the belligerent fighter Osterloh, if necessary. Most recently, he branded the board in the wage dispute in February as “anti-social”, because Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve no longer wanted to treat as public holidays. Not to forget: The works council not only speaks for itself, but above all as a representative of one of the largest teams on the planet.
The group counted 642,292 employees at the end of 2017 and therefore called itself “one of the world’s largest private employers” – rightly so. After all, 45 percent of them work in Germany. Even after the deduction of daughters such as Audi or Porsche and the workforce of companies like Volkswagen Sachsen, which were outsourced in worse times outside the domestic tariff, there is still a strike power of about 120,000 head for Germany’s largest corporate rate, especially in Lower Saxony.
Especially the company meetings in the parent plant Wolfsburg are always powerful demonstrations. And hardly anywhere does the union IG Metall have clear majorities.
The enfant terrible
If the VW boards Bernd Osterloh is too wild, there are still Uwe Hück, its counterpart in the subsidiary Porsche. The two delivered eloquent skirmishes when Porsche wanted to take over hostile Volkswagen and it finally came around the other way round.
Meanwhile, Osterloh likes to work in tandem with the Thaiboxer Hück, if he wants to show Dass the borders very clearly. In between, the Swabian makes his solo efforts without regard to the sensitivities of the sister companies. About Audi he scolded because of the diesel scandal, for example, from “sick engines”, one feels cheated and he could “not bear all these lies anymore.” Since Osterloh appears again moderate and reliable – and the attacked managers are still weakened.
The ghost of the old
Ferdinand Piëch and Bernd Osterloh, 2007
It is also noteworthy that Gunnar Kilian, the designated Chief Human Resources Officer, worked in the Salzburg office of the then supervisory board chairman Ferdinand Piëch as an interruption of his works council time from 2012 to 2013. It was an “exciting and instructive time with Mr. and Mrs. Piëch, for which I am very grateful,” he told the “Wolfsburg News” back then.
The patriarch of the large shareholder family is indeed ceded. However, brother Hans-Michel Piëch and cousin Wolfgang Porsche do not bring his will to power, overview and detailed knowledge to really steer the group. Therefore, alliances with the old continue to this day – at least as a school to pull the right stripping.
Ferdinand Piëch was a grand master of intrigue under the owners and in the management, for which he also repeatedly used Osterloh – and in turn Piëch for his purposes. Whether the then Porsche takeover plan was dropped together with the top management or later the over-CEO Martin Winterkorn“The chief of staff stood mostly knowing smiling beside Piëch, who lectured in dry words. The Porsches may have brought Diess to slow Osterloh. As a boss, they can only install him with his help and concessions.
The whole country
Stephan Weil
A joint interest connects the works council with the Lower Saxony state government: to maintain and expand the locations of the most important employer in the state. Since Niedersachsen with one fifth of the voting rights is also a significant shareholder (more influential than the Emirate of Qatar with a higher share of capital), goes against this alliance nothing.
And the country is currently the union-friendly SPD Prime Minister Stephan Weil led, as well as CDU Minister of Economic Affairs Bernd Althusmann also sits on the Supervisory Board of Volkswagen.
Lower Saxony enjoys the right of veto due to the VW Law, which was issued for the privatization of the former state-owned company in 1960 and was last preserved by the federal government against attacks by the EU Commission. In the new version, the Luxembourg European Court judges did not see any undue restriction on the free movement of capital in 2013, even though de facto special rights for Lower Saxony and a veto on the part of employees on the Supervisory Board remained in the case of location decisions.
The moral
Power station in the center of the VW parent plant Wolfsburg
The VW law is an anomaly because it goes beyond the general participation in Germany – and unlike the older mining co-determination for a single company, not an entire industry. Wolfsburg is a different world than the rest auto industry in the country, that also explains the irritation of BMW 
came cleanup Herbert Diess about the “surprisingly high degree of organization” of the union IG Metall itself on the board.
But for the exception rules, there is a historical justification. Because the foundation stone of the Volkswagen factory – and the city of Wolfsburg – was laid by the Nazi organization KdF, partly with confiscated assets of the dissolved unions and forced labor. The special rights for the employees and location guarantees are thus a kind of compensation.
The top manager of Nazi work was Ferdinand Porsche, the forefather of today’s major shareholders. So, too, when things get serious, the staff representatives can use history as a moral argument for their power.
Editor’s note: In an earlier version of this article, we wrote of non-tariff employees of Auto 5000 GmbH. However, in 2009 this company was reintegrated into Volkswagen AG. We have corrected this mistake.