Tuesday seemed to be going to be a good day at Volkswagen. Herbert Diess, the bustling company boss, had apparently gone on an excursion again – he likes to do it – at least he posted a photo of himself in a traditional jacket and the ID.3 electric vehicle on the Internet. The two stand between lush green vines, the autumn sun flatters both man and car. The photo was taken by the winemaker Manfred Tement in southern Styria, writes Diess. The overall enthusiasm: fantastic landscape, formidable wine, well-maintained Austrian motorways. And the car with the WOB license plate drove excellent, 400 kilometers without a store. Good car, good company, satisfied boss.
But appearances are deceptive. In fact, in WOB, in Wolfsburg, there is a bit of a fire under the roof – a dispute that escalated on Tuesday, just a few hours after the easy-going posts for the Internet community.
Daniela Cavallo, the head of the works council at Volkswagen, speaks out with never-before-heard sharpness. With a frontal attack on Diess. Apparently a lot has built up in the past few months. “While the CEO with his surfing on the Mittelland Canal, the bicycle demonstrations in front of the factory gate or the leisurely hiking tours with his board colleagues creates the impression that everything is going smoothly, the colleagues have been stuck in short-time work almost consistently for months,” begins the IG- Metal unionist. This is a “dramatic situation that has never been seen before”.
In fact, like most other manufacturers, Volkswagen is missing important ingredients during these months without which cars cannot be built: computer chips. The shortage, also triggered by incorrect assessments in the VW management, repeatedly leads to production stoppages.
The boss is traveling again
Regardless of this, Diess and his colleagues are currently also increasing the pressure on the workforce: efficiency must increase, especially at the headquarters, otherwise you will fall behind, especially compared to the main competitor Tesla. Diess also issued a tough number in the past few days: 30,000 jobs are at risk.
In short: the unrest is enormous. “Our employees therefore rightly have questions for Dr. Diess,” writes her top representative, Cavallo. Actually, November 4th was planned for the debate, the works meeting, the first after almost two years of Corona pause. But the boss will not join them, he will not answer any questions – because he is traveling again, this time really far away, in the USA, at an investor conference. This is the final escalation, despite his apology that the date for the staff meeting unfortunately reached him too soon.
Works council chief Daniela Cavallo: “In these times Herbert Diess refuses to answer the assembled workforce”
(Photo: Swen Pförtner / dpa)
Works council boss Daniela Cavallo’s riposte is in the style of her always robust predecessor Bernd Osterloh: “Herbert Diess prefers investors on Wall Street to his own workforce – this behavior is unprecedented in the history of our group and shows once again that the CEO himself has neither empathy nor feeling for the situation of the workforce in this crisis. ” Diess surely expected that, he likes the friction, but it still has to hurt him – because the employee representatives in Wolfsburg, at VW, are extremely powerful by law and without their involvement he can immediately forget any kind of change request.
The sharpness in Cavallo’s tone may also be due to the circumstances. In the coming year there are works council elections and in a few days there will also be the “planning round” – the annual supervisory board meeting at which decisions are made on investments in the billions and the occupancy of plants around the world. So about jobs.
But the 46-year-old business economist seems to have seriously and completely untactically lost patience. Mainly because Diess’ people, evidently bypassing all the customs of co-determination, announced their own meeting on Tuesday afternoon: “Under the motto ‘Employees ask, Herbert Diess answers'”, 200 employees could talk to the top boss for an hour on Thursday, it said it suddenly appeared on the VW intranet.
The so far moderate Cavallo has broken patience, it is said from the workers’ camp. The CEO refuses to take part in these times and is adding a dialogue event “according to his own script” to the calendar. “This provocation shows us that Dr. Diess continues to have no interest in constructive cooperation.” Furthermore – that is a reference to the fact that Diess always offends quite a few – to an extent that has brought him to the verge of expulsion several times. And because other powerful people in Wolfsburg also indicate that they will not let Diess get away with another serious mistake – as successful as it may be overall – Cavallo’s letter can be understood as a final warning. Even if the consequences are not yet openly stated.
In any case, the way out is clearly described: “End your personal profiling on the back of the workforce,” writes Cavallo, “and answer questions from the workforce on November 4th!” In this respect, Tuesday was not such a good day at Volkswagen.