Otherwise, the brand’s new vehicles get their finishing touches in the pilot hall on Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg site. Because the boardroom in the branded high-rise, where VW’s board of directors resides, is too small in Corona times, the group’s supervisory board gathered there on Thursday. The most important topic: the power struggle between the Volkswagen boss, which has broken open again Herbert Diess and the influential works council chief Bernd Osterloh.
This is under pressure. “The developers scold like the pipe sparrows,” reported one employee. The list of problems is long. Shortly before the supervisory board meeting, VW internal documents leaked that only every third Golf in Wolfsburg rolled off the assembly line without errors. This “expected the organization of VW to do too much in a short time,” the “business insider”, to whom the documents were leaked, quoted a VW insider. Shortly before that, the same platform had reported in detail on a letter from the works council, in which the employees complained about the many technical breakdowns and the rude leadership style of Diess. Nobody believes in a coincidence that the internal tensions and Osterloh’s perspective became known in the days leading up to the Supervisory Board meeting.