Volkswagen CEO Olivier Blume confronted an enormous booing crowd in Germany right this moment, telling tens of hundreds of employees that the corporate isn’t working in “a fantasy world” and that crops will likely be closing and jobs will likely be misplaced. Right here’s the most recent.
On Monday, 100 thousand employees walked off at 9 Volkswagen factories throughout Germany, together with its EV-only manufacturing facility, bringing meeting strains to a grinding halt within the battle over the slashed pay, misplaced jobs, and the automaker’s future. Now Blume is locked in an intense dispute with IG Metall, with administration pushing for main cuts whereas employees are threatening extra strikes if a good deal isn’t met.
Right now, a gaggle of about 20,000 employees at VW’s essential plant in Wolfsburg listened to Blume make the declare that the corporate has its fingers tied. “As administration we’re not working in a fantasy world. We’re making choices in a quickly altering setting,” he advised employees, in accordance with Automotive Information Europe. Blume added that he grew up within the area and Wolfsburg was near his coronary heart, however that sentiment was met with roaring boos from the group.
Volkswagen and IG Metall are scheduled to satisfy for a fourth spherical of talks on December 9.
The strike comes after weeks of collective bargaining negotiations wherein Volkswagen didn’t again down from its plan to probably reduce hundreds of jobs and shut factories in Germany – a primary within the automaker’s 87-year historical past within the nation. Volkswagen plans to shut at the very least three factories, lay off hundreds of employees, and trim pay for these remaining by 10%, all because it fights to remain alive amid stiff competitors from China. Volkswagen introduced that it will formally shut its Audi plant in Brussels the place it makes the Audi Q8 E-Tron.
“The worth stress is immense,” Blume mentioned, including that VW was struggling in its largest market China and that labor prices in Germany had been too excessive to compete. “We subsequently urgently have to take measures to safe the way forward for Volkswagen,” he mentioned, in accordance with the report. “Our plans for this are on the desk.”
A tough comparability of wage information from 2023 exhibits that, on common, the hourly wage for a employee within the German vehicle trade is about 33 euros ($34,72), which has been principally unchanged up to now few years. autoworker wages in China, a Reuters evaluation of 30 auto companies within the nation, together with Tesla, SAIC, and Xpeng, exhibits hourly wages of 14 yuan ($1.93) to 31 yuan ($4.27). BYD posted a place final yr at its Shenzhen manufacturing facility with a month-to-month earnings beginning at 5,000 yuan, or $688.
VW’s labor council head Daniela Cavallo has criticized Blume for not being prepared to make sacrifices in administration and among the many shareholders. She mentioned the union is aiming for a deal to be finalized by Christmas. “That can imply compromises. Concessions too. Issues that you simply don’t like and that typically damage you a technique or one other. However that has to use to all sides,” she mentioned. “In any other case, it’s not a compromise.”
This comes at a time when VW is radically restructuring its enterprise to chop prices, whereas searching for to streamline manufacturing and growth processes, shaving off months on the event cycles of particular tasks to assist tighten the belts, all whereas rethinking its EV retail mannequin to remain extra aggressive. Volkswagen has been going through a steep decline in gross sales in China, which is its core market, whereas concurrently going through challenges from BYD and different Chinese language automakers getting into the European market.
As an apart, the strikes didn’t unfold to its factories within the US, the place many employees are unrepresented by unions. The United Auto Staff symbolize just one Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, however they weren’t concerned within the European strikes.
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