Some 66,000 Volkswagen AG workers across Germany walked off the job on Monday, the first wave of temporary walkouts prompted by a standoff over how to cut costs at the automaker’s namesake brand.
The so-called warning strikes — designed to pressure management during stalled negotiations — took place at all but one of VW’s ten German plants, starting with the company’s flagship electric vehicle plant in Zwickau.
IG Metall, Germany’s powerful union, said it reserved the right to call further warning strikes and that worker rallies were planned at factories in the next few days.
“If necessary, this will be the toughest collective bargaining battle Volkswagen has ever seen,” Thorsten Gröger, IG Metall’s lead negotiator in the VW talks, said before the mass action.
VW management and labor leaders are at loggerheads over how to deal with declining demand for electric vehicles, higher operating costs and increasing competition from Chinese manufacturers. While management said the company had to close three German factories and lay off thousands of workers, union representatives pushed for the factories to remain open.
The automaker last experienced a smaller-scale walkout at all sites in 2021 during the pandemic, but a larger work stoppage during wage negotiations in 2018 saw more than 50,000 workers at six plants participate.
VW shares fell about 1.9% early Monday before paring losses.
In Wolfsburg, employees walked off their jobs on Monday morning to attend a rally where works council chief Daniela Cavallo criticized management for refusing to back down from threats to close factories and for not supporting dividend cuts as part of an austerity plan.
“This warning strike is being held to emphasize our legitimate demands,” Cavallo told workers gathered outside the high-rise building that houses VW’s corporate offices. “Management should know that the crisis at VW can only be solved with the workforce, not against them.”
The two hours of halted production on four production lines at VW’s main factory in Wolfsburg means the loss of approximately 400 to 600 vehicles. The total is likely to exceed 1,000 if other car factories in Germany are counted.
Cavallo took aim at the company’s executives, including chief executive Oliver Blume, who largely relinquished any substantive role in the negotiations to brand chief Thomas Schäfer and chief of staff Gunnar Kilian. Blume “takes a stand when it suits him and says he has nothing to do with the problems at the namesake brand,” she said.
“We are unwilling to accept factory closings, mass layoffs and cuts to existing collective wage agreements,” Cavallo added.
The company is seeking a constructive dialogue to reach a mutually supported solution, a Volkswagen spokesman said on Sunday, adding that the company has taken special measures in response to the planned walkout.
On Friday, Volkswagen rejected the unionists’ latest proposals as insufficient. The 1.5 billion euro ($1.6 billion) package of additional labor cuts included slashing dividend payouts, reducing the share of bonuses for management and factory workers next year and in 2026, and putting planned wage increases into a fund to pay for possible layoffs and reduction shift.
A fourth round of talks is scheduled to take place on December 9, and Cavallo said the meeting “will probably determine the way forward: compromise or escalation.”
VW’s corporate structure gives workers a strong voice in key decisions, making it difficult for management to unilaterally push through painful cost cuts. Employee representatives occupy half of the seats on the company’s supervisory board, while VW’s home state of Lower Saxony has an additional two seats.
(Updates with estimated dropout participation)
