Volkswagen, glimmer of hope for factories: in direction of an settlement that avoids closures | EUROtoday

Hello Volkswagen factories in Germany? A glimmer of hope is opening up: the corporate and the unions have been engaged in an intense spherical of negotiations for 4 days and in response to the Bloomberg company they’re getting nearer to an settlement that might keep away from the closure of the crops. The carmaker’s managers had threatened to shut as much as three, leading to hundreds of redundancies.

Agreements suspending collective layoffs till 2030 would even be reinstated. In trade, employees would surrender pay bonuses. The negotiation remains to be ongoing.

Other cost-cutting measures on the desk embody shifting Golf manufacturing from the Wolfsburg headquarters to Mexico and halting manufacturing of VW-branded electrical automobiles in Zwickau, which might be taken to Wolfsburg and Emden, leaving the positioning in jap Germany solely the manufacturing of Audi fashions and chassis.

To compensate, a automobile recycling challenge could possibly be applied in Zwickau, which might require as much as 1,000 jobs. Wolfsburg is able to produce the electrical Golf, which will probably be primarily based on a brand new platform developed with the American Rivian and which ought to be prepared in 2028.

On this foundation, the settlement appears removed from the corporate’s requests, which along with the closure of crops embody cuts in labor prices of 10%. Ig Metall, then again, has supplied reductions in labor prices of 1.5 billion and cuts to working hours, however firmly opposes the closures and has led over 100 thousand of the group’s staff to go on strike already twice. The union has threatened an escalation in 2025 if there isn’t any settlement by Christmas. The present spherical of negotiations is the fifth and commenced on Monday 16 December.

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