Herbert Diess
The VW boss plans massive savings.
(Photo: Bloomberg)
Berlin Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess urges a media report in the corona crisis on savings. That have This Recently made clear in a speech to top managers of the group, the industry magazine “Automobilwoche” reported on Saturday, citing participants.
“We have to cut R&D expenditure, investments and fixed costs significantly compared to the previous planning status”, he was quoted. The Group’s net liquidity will “continue to decrease at least until July due to weak demand”. Not all VWBrands would create a positive annual result in 2020, Diess said at the event last Thursday, the magazine said.
Initially, no comments were received from the company or the works council.
According to the report, the main brand is said to be VW Cars reduce their so-called material overheads by 20 percent. In addition to product shifts, this also allows important series to be checked at high pressure which models can be completely eliminated. “With the new economy round, further trouble with the works council under Bernd Osterloh is inevitable,” the magazine quoted a VW top manager not mentioned by name.
This is faced with increasing pressure from employee representatives. Most recently, IG Metall representatives of the German VW plants had the technical Problems with the new Golf 8 and the electric car ID.3 as an opportunity to accuse management in other areas of failing to cope with the crisis and publicly portraying the Wolfsburg-based carmaker in an open letter to the supervisory board and executive board.
At the same time, they emphasized that further austerity programs should be rejected at the expense of the employees.