WolfsburgAnd then Alexander Wilke tells the trick with the underground car park. Wilke is in front of 300 works councils of the VolkswagenGroup, without suit, but in jeans and with gray mottled hair. He can talk, and he can also be suspenseful.
Wilke, head of communications at Thyssen-Krupp, accompanied the cultural change there and should report here. For example, by abolishing the old order in the underground car park, Wilke tells. Earlier it was said: the higher the rank, the closer the personal parking lot to the elevator. Now everyone could stand where he wanted. Wilke shows a picture from the garage, where now are small red cars next to medium-sized white and large black vehicles. If now the CEO comes too late, he just has to keep going, says the PR professional. That’s up to the taste of the audience.
And Bernd Osterloh? He did not even raise his head. The chief of staff of the VW Group sits on the podium, a massive man with a bald head, engrossed in anything. When Wilke addresses him once, he seems absent. Did he listen? Does he find that important, cultural change? On the assumption, he himself had looked rather bored at Wilkes lecture, Osterloh later insists that this is not true. “That’s what he said: That’s how I imagine it.”
Bernd Osterloh: To the person
Later, Osterloh will tell those present that he recognizes weaknesses in the management culture at VW, Also Osterloh actually wants cultural change, he has invited Wilke. But hierarchies are also important to the 61-year-old. Osterloh has been with the company for 41 years and has been head of the central works council for 13 years. He sits just as long in the supervisory board, the supreme supervisory body. Can that be part of the solution?
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Finally, Wilke, the cultural converter, presented a graph: 70 percent of the executives were exchanged at Thyssen-Krupp. At VW, a lot has started, albeit rarely voluntarily. First, Patriarch Ferdinand Piëch resigned from the chairmanship of the Supervisory Board and finally sold his shares to other family members of the Porsche / Piëch clan.
Principle “big pants”
Then the unassailable CEO Martin Winterkorn crashed at the beginning of the diesel crisis. His successor, Matthias Müller, did not spend three years at the helm, and Audi CEO Rupert Stadler, once Piëch’s office manager, is even in custody. Almost all are gone. All except for Osterloh.
Born in Brunswick, Germany’s most powerful works council, for a long time nothing happened to him in the VW group. No question, Osterloh has achieved a lot with his boisterous, loud way in this system, at least for the workers in Germany. VW today has more employees than ever, the wage increases in VW house rate were last strong.
But with his principle “big pants” Osterloh has become also the most visible symbol of the Ancien Régime at VW. The “last man standing” from the strictly hierarchical, testosterone-laden corporate culture that characterized Winterkorn and Piëch. But also of the mundane get-together of gasoline-born alpha male in management and works council. “What he does is remarkable,” said Osterloh in July 2015 on Winterkorn, two months before the announcement of the diesel scandal.
VW works meeting
Osterloh speaks to thousands of employees at a VW works meeting.
(Photo: imago / regios24)
Today no one denies any more: The deficient culture of error and criticism at VW promoted the scams that brought the company criminal investigations against the boardroom and thousands of lawsuits of deceived customers.
Osterloh proved to be agile in the crisis: in September 2015, shortly after the tampering became known, he positioned himself with pithy words. “I can assure you that we will do everything possible in the forthcoming meetings of the Supervisory Board so that the education proceeds quickly and personal consequences are drawn,” he wrote in a letter to the workforce.
Has passed from all this until today little. Despite billions of penalties in the US and now also in Germany, you stubbornly refuse to Volkswagen to blame anybody on the management floor personally for the diesel scandal. On a train journey in early July from Wolfsburg to Berlin Osterloh acts quickly annoyed when it addresses the topic of responsibility , “Of 640 000 people, the responsible Dieselgate made mistakes. That’s why the whole company is not bad, “he says.
Volkswagen has great products, attach to the sales figures. “Despite the diesel crisis we have improved the result.” Many statements on the train ride can not be cited, because Osterloh does not subsequently release them. Especially those in which it comes to the co-responsibility of the long-standing supervisory board Osterloh for the diesel crisis.
Of course: Osterloh was not shown any knowledge of the diesel manipulations. And he is in office because the VW employees have re-elected him every four years. Most recently in March of this year: When the results are announced, Osterloh is located on the first floor of the local IG Metall headquarters, not far from Wolfsburg train station. The winner of the election wears a dark suit and tie, with some beads of sweat on his forehead.
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It is not a real celebration, rather a nice get-together of metallers. The trade unionists seem relieved. Her employer has been in the headlines for three years because of diesel manipulation and its consequences. VW boss Matthias Müller already wobbles, not a month later, he will lose his job.
In this environment, Osterloh’s IG Metall has received 86 percent of the vote, two percentage points less than at the last election. “I am satisfied,” asserts Osterloh on this evening in March. Another works council admits: “it could have been a few percentage points more.”
While Osterloh’s core team is pushing for departure, others are still waiting for a well-wishers: VW brand manager Herbert Diess. Ex-boss Winterkorn had come mostly to congratulate on the electoral success, says a present. An employee calls on Diess’ people if the manager wants to come. Of course he would like to come, let Diess do it, but he still needs it. An affront, at least in the old way.
Only at VW he becomes the Rampensau
Since Diess switched from BMW to Wolfsburg in July 2015, his relationship with employees has been difficult. Winterkorn and Piëch had brought Diess for a mission that only a newcomer to the corporation could do: to increase the meager return of the core brand, also by cutting staff costs. It quickly becomes clear that the new VW brand boss did not come to Wolfsburg as a worker whisperer: on the one hand there is a mail circulating in which the Austrian asked about the promotion of several employees to their IG Metall membership. The union is angry.
Later Osterloh accuses Diess of “anti-social behavior” because he does not want to take on temporary workers. This is generally not a friend of involving all parties and holding long consultations before decisions – unlike his predecessor Müller. The new Wolfsburg autocracy get to feel the boards, but also Osterloh. That’s new to him. Also Piëch and Winterkorn preferred to decide alone. But most of them were Osterloh, the working-class prince. In the beginning it looks like a victory for Osterloh. The “Future Pact”, which Osterloh negotiated with Diess in the spring of 2017, does not require redundancies. The works council has the overambitious manager in its place, so it seems.
Volkswagen Future Pact
Osterloh (2nd from the left) at the end of 2016 between former VW executives (from left to right): HR Director Karlheinz Blessing, VW Brand Director Herbert Diess, CEO Matthias Müller and Lower Saxony’s Minister President Stephan Weil.
(Photo: picture alliance / Philipp von D)
At the Wolfsburg trade union house, Osterloh does not want to wait any longer for the well-wishers Diess. “Let’s go, I’m hungry,” says the head of the works council and sets the train in motion. At the gates of Wolfsburg there is beef fillet and a solid drink. Osterloh looks relieved this evening, not euphoric. He has fought so many fights, maybe he has been tired.
Bernd Osterloh comes from below. Son of a railway worker, raised in Braunschweig, qualified secondary school graduation. At the local company Rollei, a well-known manufacturer of cameras, he went in April 1973 apprenticeship. He did not leave a lasting impression there. Despite its current reputation, especially in the region, hardly anyone can remember the apprentice Bernd Osterloh.
Even a colleague from the same class of training 1973 must fit. “No one has spoken here about him,” says site manager Heidi Opiela, since the late 80s at the company. “He must have been completely inconspicuous.” The same is also reported by training director Hans Meves. “The guy he is today, he was not then,” says Meves.
When asked, laughs Osterloh, is recognizable but also a little offended. Surely Meves is already well over 80. As you already remember wrong. On the contrary, he was class president and later deputy head boy. To correct Rampensau Osterloh will probably only at VW. His grand entrance comes in a deep crisis for the group and its employee representatives: in the pleasure travel affair, over which his predecessor Klaus Volkert crashes in 2005. It’s about prostitutes at the company’s expense. Osterloh flushes the affair to the top.
Under Piëch and Winterkorn VW is growing drastically. The processes in the company, however, remain underdeveloped. While the management duo is reorganizing the group, Osterloh keeps the workforce on the line.
He does not drive badly, personally. In 2005, his monthly salary is 6,500 euros gross. In 2007 he says on the subject: “For me it is important not to cause envy with my salary. If a VW employee earns 30,000 or 50,000 euros, I do not think he will have a problem with the works council chairman making double. “
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But there are clear limits. “But if it’s ten or twenty times, we have a very different discussion. It is important to me that I can morally represent my salary to my colleagues. “Indeed? Last year it comes out that he has even earned 750,000 euros in one year.
How does he explain this to the workforce? “86 percent,” says Osterloh. “Those who choose me judge that.” In the meantime, the management has massively downgraded him. Between 140,000 and 150,000 euros a year with bonuses only. The company also settles the question of compensation through arbitration.
It may be coincidence that his salary drop falls into a time in which even Osterloh’s power was in danger. Instead of Ferdinand Piëch, Wolfgang Porsche is now setting the tone in the owner family: “The board manages the company and not the works council,” explains Porsche in the spring of 2017. He puts Diess in position, first as a core brand, then as a group boss.
For some months, both sides have been fighting for almost every important person in the group. So far, it seems as if Osterloh win some battle, but Diess the war. As the CEO wants to make the Audi CFO Alexander Seitz after Stadler’s arrest to the interim head, votes Osterloh instead for sales director Bram Schot. Seitz had brought a moderate austerity program at Audi on the web. Actually no Casus Belli for the employee representatives.
Personalcoup could backfire
But Osterloh is concerned with the question of power. In the short term, he prevails, Schot is boss – but not long, as this week was known. New Audi boss will now be Markus Duesmann, who worked as a BMW purchasing board for a long time with Diess. The Duesmann appointment is a double victory for Diess: On the one hand, he strengthens his home power in the group, he replaces the Piëch-Intimus Stadler with his own man. In addition, lateral entrants Duesmann must take no account of cliques and long-time allies among the workers, if he brings the last low return of the Ingolstadt back on its feet.
Even Osterloh’s largest personnel coup could still be a flop: As the price for not being able to prevent Diess as CEO, Osterloh demands the head of personnel director Karlheinz Blessing, who had been too much manager for him. A personnel board should know what the IG Metall wanted, said Osterloh in a small group. He succeeds Gunnar Kilian, his closest associate on the works council.
Verbalattacke on ex-manager Blessing: VW works council chief Osterloh: “I do not need a human resources director without draft here”
He is missing now. Although Osterloh is well connected, negotiating compromises is not his thing. Since it is about many details, he left so far mainly Kilian. Thanks to his good wire to the board of directors, supervisory board chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch, the owner families and the state of Lower Saxony, Kilian has negotiated many deals, which were later attributed to Osterloh.
Kilian is not one who pushes forward, rather a doer in the background – who is now on the other side. Osterloh now has more appointments to complete itself, such as the talks in advance of Supervisory Board meetings. This is not just a time-consuming burden, Osterloh now has to position itself earlier.
Power tactically, this is a disadvantage: Once negotiated compromises, he can no longer subsequently change in favor of the works council – especially since he has a personnel board on the other hand, who knows him well. The first big conflict with Kilian could be in the autumn, when negotiating company agreements.
Osterloh will be in September 62, it is his last term as a councilor. In the next three years, he must build a successor. He has three candidates in the eye, it says in works council circles. Who that is, is silent about Osterloh. “The names of those I would call would be burned right away,” he says.
A works council leader with so much power, as they had Osterloh, it will be no longer at VW anyway so fast.
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