Investigators searched Volkswagen offices because of allegations of excessive salaries for works council members. In Wolfsburg, among other places, they secured documents and data.
Volkswagen has once again come under the public prosecutor’s attention because of possible excessively high works council salaries. Yesterday, four VW locations – including offices in Wolfsburg – were searched on suspicion of breach of trust, a spokesman for the Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office said today. “The background is salary payments to works council members in violation of the prohibition of preferential treatment in the Works Constitution Act.”
A VW spokesman confirmed that offices at the Wolfsburg plant had been searched. “The Volkswagen Group is cooperating fully with the investigative authorities,” it said. Due to the ongoing proceedings, the company does not want to comment further.
Salaries too high for VW works council members?
According to company sources, documents and data were seized during the searches. According to the public prosecutor’s office, four private apartments “that have nothing to do with VW” were also checked. These were “sometimes searches of unsuspected people.”
There have been ongoing proceedings for years over suspicions of excessive works council salaries at Volkswagen. At the beginning of this year, the Criminal Senate of the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) overturned acquittals for four former VW personnel managers whom the public prosecutor’s office accused of breach of trust. They are said to have approved salaries that were too high for works councils. Now the proceedings must be reopened before the Braunschweig regional court, which initially acquitted the four.
Regulation not permitted at VW
“According to the Works Constitution Act, works council members work on a voluntary basis,” Roland Schwarze from the Institute for Labor, Corporate and Social Law at Leibniz University Hannover recently explained to the NDR. You will then be released from work for your work, but will continue to receive your normal average salary.
The problem at VW is that the pay is based on the work in the works council – i.e. on the qualifications and responsibility of the job, says Schwarze. However, this is inadmissible.