Agencies
Volkswagen is preparing to close at least three factories in Germany, cut tens of thousands of jobs, and downsize its remaining plants, marking a more extensive restructuring than initially anticipated, the head of the carmaker’s works council said on Monday.
Europe’s biggest automaker has been negotiating for weeks with unions over its plans to overhaul its business and lower costs, including considering plant closures in Germany for the first time.
“Management is absolutely serious about all this. This is not saber-rattling in the collective bargaining round,” Daniela Cavallo, Volkswagen’s works council head, told several hundreds of employees in Wolfsburg on Monday.
“This is the plan of Germany’s largest industrial group to start the sell-off in its home country of Germany,” Cavallo added, not specifying which plants would be affected or how many of Volkswagen Group’s roughly 300,000 staff in Germany could be laid off.
The comments mark a major escalation of a conflict between Volkswagen’s workers and the group’s management, which is under severe pressure to cut costs and remain competitive in light of weaker demand from China and Europe.
They also heap further pressure on the German government to act on the persistent weakness of its economy, which faces a second successive year of contraction.
