It was comparatively quiet in Wolfsburg for over half a year: Europe’s largest industrial group, Volkswagen, was busy designing battery factories and making plans for robot cars. The usual scramble between the strong employee representation and the self-confident management had a break, especially since VW CEO Herbert Diess received a largely free ticket in the summer: First his fiercest opponent, Works Council Chairman Bernd Osterloh, was praised for a well-paid management position in the truck division. And then in July Diess’ own contract was extended until 2025.
But now the dispute begins again – at the usual VW volume, with the potential for a really big row. Diess has made the possible reduction of 30,000 jobs in the room. As is usually the case in Wolfsburg, there is a conflict of returns and speed on the one hand and jobs and style on the other, all of which is overlaid by this major turnaround towards electromobility and digitization.
A few days ago the Wolfsburg General titled: “Fear of capacity utilization: VW works council calls for an e-model for Wolfsburg as early as 2024”. The huge main plant, which is the heart of the group for the works council, is currently not being fully exploited: people could build a million cars here, but last year there were only half as many. And this year the factory is threatened with a “historic production slump,” warns Daniela Cavallo, who recently became VW’s first female worker.
“The location needs a faster route to e-mobility.”
The corona epidemic, the chip crisis but also the switch to electromobility are slowing down the demand for Wolfsburg cars: the famous Golf in particular is manufactured here. An icon, Herbert Diess likes to drive the GTI variant, but one from the combustion era, which is likely to sell less well. The workers in Wolfsburg, like all workers in all car companies around the world, are therefore demanding to be able to produce electric models as quickly as possible: “The location needs a quicker route to e-mobility,” says Cavallo. The robot-electric wonder car called “Trinity” planned in Wolfsburg for 2026 will come too late and will also not have the necessary quantities to compensate for the decline in the Golf and to keep the approximately 60,000 jobs at the location. The topic is also fired because the annual “planning round” is due again in November, in which the VW supervisory boards decide which brands are allowed to invest billions and which vehicles are built where in the world.
Herbert Diess knows that, of course – but has thoughts that are obviously going in exactly the opposite direction. At least three weeks ago, at the Group’s supervisory board meeting, he spoke again about the high costs, i.e. the efficiency: They are much higher than those from Stellantis (Opel, Citroen, Peugeot, Fiat), Toyota or even Tesla. The US company is currently building a car factory in Brandenburg, which Diess is raising to the level of efficiency, because there, among other things, large metal parts are built from a single cast on extremely well-planned factory lines instead of laboriously screwing individual parts together. He is also concerned about the number of registrations: in September 6,886 Golfs were sold in Germany. But only a few dozen less Tesla Model 3: 6828 to be precise.
This is another attack on the Wolfsburg site. They often ran into nowhere
This is what it reported Handelsblatt and VW circles confirmed that the SZ are now discussing what the future of the VW brand might look like. And at the supervisory board meeting he put a number in his mouth that frightened many: It was possible to cut up to 30,000 jobs, that would be every fourth job at the core brand. His press people now explain that there are “no concrete scenarios”, but point out that “in view of the new market participants we have to deal with the competitiveness of our plant in Wolfsburg”.
This is – once again – an attack on Wolfsburg, the location where the powerful ex-VW patriarchs were already desperate: Legend has it that Ferdinand Piëch showed his foster son and interim CEO Martin Winterkorn the main plant with the words: Take care of yourself everything, but let everything go here. The IG Metall shop stewards are too strong here, the works council is too interested in the well-being of the people here for a very attractive business margin to be possible. Diess never wanted to stick to this unwritten rule. Since he was brought to VW, he has wanted to break with it – also because he usually finds it so difficult with his savings targets: If the core of the shop is not running, why should we stretch ourselves like that, they ask in the other plants, at the Sister brands.
And now? That Diess actually enforces such a job cut is hardly conceivable for the time being, even if it were stretched to 3000 jobs per year. We’re not going along with that, say corporate decision-makers, who point out that Diess is once again falling into his own pattern: leadership and change through provocation. From the employee side it says: “Absurd.” She expects, explained works council boss Cavallo, that the group’s board of directors will make it clear “immediately and unequivocally” that there will be no mental games about any job cuts. This will react, that is certain. Probably in his own way.