(Reuters) – Workers at nine Volkswagen car and component factories across Germany began strikes lasting several hours on Monday (02), disrupting assembly lines amid a dispute between the union and the automaker over the future of the company’s operations. company.
Thousands of workers gathered at Volkswagen’s headquarters in Wolfsburg. Demonstrations also took place at the Hanover plant, which employs around 14,000 workers, and at other component and vehicle factories including Emden, Salzgitter and Brunswick.
At the company’s main factory in Wolfsburg alone, one means several hundred cars, including the iconic Golf, are no longer assembled, union sources said.
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The stoppages, which could turn into 24-hour or unlimited strikes if a deal is not reached in the next round of wage negotiations, will reduce Volkswagen’s production as the automaker is already facing a decline in deliveries and a drop in profit.
“The duration and intensity of this confrontation is the responsibility of Volkswagen at the negotiating table,” said Thorsten Groeger, who is leading the negotiations on behalf of the IG Metall union.
Daniela Cavallo, head of Volkswagen’s works council, reiterated that Volkswagen’s biggest shareholders, which in addition to the state of Lower Saxony include a holding company controlled by the Porsche and Piech families, may also have to make sacrifices regarding the annual dividend. She did not explain what this would entail.
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Cavallo said the fourth, scheduled for December 9, will result in a consensus between the two sides or an escalation.
“Unfortunately, the signals sent recently by management are not really encouraging,” she said, adding that factory closures, mass layoffs and cuts to existing wages are unacceptable topics for workers in the current negotiation process.
A Volkswagen spokesperson said the automaker respects workers’ right to strike and that the company has taken steps to ensure a basic level of supplies to customers and minimize the impact of the strike.
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Last week, the union proposed measures that it said would save 1.5 billion euros, including waiving executive bonuses for 2025 and 2026. The proposal was rejected by the automaker.
Volkswagen demands a 10% salary cut, saying it needs to reduce costs and increase results to defend its market share, amid the group’s competition with automakers in China. The company also threatened to close factories in Germany for the first time in its 87-year history.
“The management wants to drive the nail in even deeper,” said Lucia Heim, a worker at the VW plant in Hanover who took part in Monday’s strike. “It’s a distorted world: in football, coaches quit if they’re not winning the game. At VW, it’s the opposite. Players are being punished.”
