AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)11/21 Report--

According to a CCTV news report, on November 20 local time, the German Metal Union, which represents Volkswagen workers, held a press conference at Volkswagen headquarters in Wolfsburg. The union proposed to oppose Volkswagen's pay cuts, layoffs and plant closures, and pointed out that if the plan is not accepted by management, the union will hold a large-scale strike from the 1st of next month.

To reduce production costs and help Volkswagen cope with risks, unions can accept reduced working hours to retain more jobs and include some of the planned increases in wages and bonuses into a "future fund," the report said. these measures could help Volkswagen reduce labor costs by 1.5 billion euros, but refused to accept pay cuts, layoffs and plant closures proposed by Volkswagen management.

It is understood that Volkswagen currently has about 650000 employees worldwide, of which 300000 are in Germany. Earlier, foreign media pointed out that trade unions have great influence in Volkswagen, where labor representatives account for half of the seats on Volkswagen's supervisory board and theoretically have the right to strike from December 1 as a means to further escalate the conflict.

In fact, the Volkswagen Group has been cutting wages, layoffs and factory closures for nearly two months. According to the latest report, Volkswagen said it would review the union proposal and the possibility of closing the plant could not be ruled out. In addition, Volkswagen management has set a savings target of 1.7 billion euros for the Volkswagen brand, but as no agreement can be reached, Volkswagen management will hold the next round of negotiations with the union on Thursday.

At present, Volkswagen is facing a difficult period of declining global sales and electrified transformation, which is also the background of Volkswagen's wage cuts, layoffs and factory closures, hoping to cut costs.

As early as early September, Volkswagen said it planned to close a large car factory and a parts factory in Germany, involving Volkswagen's main passenger car brands. It was reported at the time that it would be the first time that Volkswagen had closed a plant in Germany since it was founded in 1926, and that the closure and forced layoffs of local factories would be completed by 2026.

On Sept. 10, Volkswagen announced that it would end a series of job-guarantee agreements with unions, which were supposed to protect jobs until 2029, but will now end early in the middle of next year. Oliver Blume, chief executive of Volkswagen, said Volkswagen must take further steps amid a difficult economic environment, industry competition and the weakening competitiveness of Germany as a manufacturing hub.

Volkswagen's board has drawn up a plan to seek a series of cost-cutting measures for its underperforming passenger car brands, people familiar with the matter said. these include a 10 per cent pay cut for all staff, a moratorium on wage increases for the two years after next year, and the closure of some German factories with the goal of saving 4 billion euros. Meanwhile, Daniela Cavallo, chairman of the labor committee of Volkswagen Group, further revealed that Volkswagen plans to close at least three factories in Germany and cut tens of thousands of jobs. The move comes a day after thousands of people gathered in front of Volkswagen's headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany, where workers demanded that the company should not close any of its factories.

Whether it is wage cuts and layoffs or factory closures, the reason behind is that Volkswagen aims to solve the problem of overcapacity and declining competitiveness in order to reduce costs and increase efficiency. As Europe's largest carmaker, Volkswagen is facing many challenges, the first of which is overcapacity caused by falling sales. Volkswagen Group's cumulative global sales in the first three quarters of this year were 6.5243 million vehicles, down 2.8 per cent from a year earlier, according to data. Of this total, Volkswagen brand passenger car sales totaled 3.3968 million, down 2.5 per cent from a year earlier.

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