Volkswagen and the IG Metall metalworkers union both dug in their heels on Sunday before increasingly bitter wage talks resume that could lead to the first strike ever at Europe’s biggest carmaker.
The union demands a pay increase and job guarantees in the talks due to continue in Hanover, Germany, on Monday, while Volkswagen says it needs a wage freeze and other measures to avoid job cuts at its money-losing German factories.
“That’s completely unthinkable and unacceptable,” the union’s chief negotiator Hartmut Meine told Reuters on Sunday.
VW’s works council head Klaus Volkert, also of IG Metall said: “Nobody expects that there will be a deal that brings a cornucopia of benefits for the staff. But the colleagues expect that their jobs are secured on a sustainable basis.”
VW personnel chief Peter Hartz reiterated on Sunday that German jobs would have to go if the union did not agree to his plans for a wage-freeze and other measures to cut wage costs by 2 billion euros ($2.6 billion) until 2011.
“If we can’t execute our plan, the number of jobs at Volkswagen in Germany will fall dramatically over the next few years,” he was quoted as saying in Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
Workers angered by the carmaker’s plans to slash labor costs by 2 billion euros until 2011 will expand warning strikes Monday to nearly all the carmaker’s western German plants, which between them employ a work force of around 103,000.
Warning strikes
Staff plan to stage limited work stoppages at VW’s Braunschweig, Salzgitter, Kassel and Emden plants and “decentralized information meetings” during working hours at VW’s main plant in Wolfsburg, labor officials said.
Works council officials say prolonged stoppages in Braunschweig and Salzgitter would disrupt production in many countries because these factories make chassis, axles and motors for all the group’s brands.
A full strike — which would be the first ever at the company founded in 1937 in Nazi Germany — can be called after the union declares the talks failed, which it can do from Monday.
But Meine said he did not aim for a strike. “Our goal is not a strike but to get a deal in the talks,” he said. ”Monday’s talks will make clear which road we are going down.”
Labor relations at low ebb
VW’s core Volkswagen brand has turned to losses as fierce competition has kept prices under severe pressure. As a group, VW is still profitable thanks to its luxury Audi line and its thriving financial services business.
Labor relations are at a nadir at VW, which prides itself on harmonious ties with workers and whose personnel chief is even a member of IG Metall.
Other automakers are also trying to cut costs in Germany, home to the world’s highest-paid car workers, so the entire engineering sector is watching the VW wage talks closely.
General Motors plans to cut up to 12,000 jobs in Europe — the bulk of them in Germany — to stem chronic losses in the region where it has not made a profit since 1999. Negotiations are continuing.