Generation change at the head of the powerful Volkswagen works council: After 16 years in office, works council chief Bernd Osterloh (64) is stepping down. His tasks – including the seat on the supervisory board – will be taken over by his previous deputy, 46-year-old Daniela Cavallo, as the VW group works council announced on Friday. Osterloh changes sides at short notice and becomes Chief Human Resources Officer at Volkswagen’s truck subsidiary Traton on May 1st, the public holiday of the labor movement.
Cavallo has been working as an office communications clerk at Volkswagen since she began her training in 1994. She studied business administration while working. She has been a member of the works council since 2002, and a member of the general works council since 2013. Cavallo lives in Wolfsburg and has two children. She is the first woman to head the employee representative body in Germany’s largest industrial group with more than 660,000 employees.
Only 17 percent of the workforce and 7 percent in top management are women. The group is fighting for female leadership, especially in IT and on the board of directors. According to information from manager magazin, the former McKinsey partner and State Secretary Katrin Suder (49) is about to be appointed head of digital.
Daniela Cavallo’s move to the top
Months ago, Cavallo showed ambition to rise: If you become deputy chairman, you also want to be at the top, she said. Bernd Osterloh’s move to Traton – at least publicly – was not yet foreseeable. And she is far from being chosen. Now it has arrived.
Cavallo has long been closely involved in the central projects in Wolfsburg. She helped negotiate the pact for the future, in which it was decided to cut 14,000 net jobs in 2017, she helped shape the digital transformation, also working closely with today’s HR director Gunnar Kilian (46), who himself before his appointment as managing director in 2018 General Secretary for the group works council.
Daniela Cavallo once said that she doesn’t know any other company that focuses so much on social responsibility as Volkswagen. And that is so successful with it. She doesn’t understand, she added, when managers come from outside and don’t take the opportunity to build something in a company like this.
This can be understood as a gentle warning to CEO Herbert Diess (62); but at least as a warning. The skirmishes with Bernd Osterloh were fierce and certainly sometimes grueling. But he won’t have it easy with Daniela Cavallo either.
“Thinking so strategically that many more will be amazed”
As his deputy, Cavallo had “done an excellent job for two and a half years”, explained Osterloh. She is “strong in leadership, empathic and thinking so strategically that many will be surprised”. The future head of the works council declared that the “Volkswagen family” owed Osterloh “an enormous amount”. To build on his achievements “is now my obligation”.
Wolfgang Porsche and Hans Michel Piech, spokespersons for the major shareholder families, declared on Friday, “We look forward to a constructive cooperation” with Cavallo. It “goes without saying” that the shareholders “set different priorities” than the works council on some issues.
The group works council emphasized on Friday that the “baton handover” will take place well before the start of the “super election year 2022” – next year the works council and supervisory board elections will coincide for the first time in 20 years for employees at Volkswagen. The employees elect their new works council every four years and their representation on the employee side on the supervisory board every five years. Cavallo should lead the IG Metall list for the supervisory board election as the top candidate. She will soon be promoted to the board without waiting for the election so that Osterloh’s seat on the supervisory board does not remain vacant. Necessary steps for your order via the registry court have already been initiated, it said on Friday.