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Production at the majority of Volkswagen’s German plants ground to a halt for several hours on Monday as tens of thousands of workers staged so-called warning strikes in protest against plans to shut factories.
Union IG Metall on Monday said 66,000 workers took part in two-hour walkouts at nine German plants, including the company’s Wolfsburg headquarters, escalating the struggle over the future of Europe’s largest carmaker.
“If necessary, this will be the toughest collective bargaining dispute Volkswagen has ever seen,” said IG Metall’s chief negotiator Thorsten Gröger. The union said that further workers would strike
An obligation by staff not to strike expired over the weekend after VW in September ended a three-decade-old labour agreement, arguing that drastically sliding sales in Europe and China were forcing it to cut wages and headcount.
Executives’ plans to close three German plants, eliminate tens of thousands of jobs and cut the pay of remaining workers at the VW brand by 10 per cent have put them on a collision course with the company’s powerful works council, which controls half the seats on its supervisory board.
The state of Lower Saxony, where VW is headquartered, controls an additional 20 per cent of supervisory board voting rights and tends to prioritise jobs and side with the works council, making it harder for the company to push through cost cuts without the support of staff.
Last month, worker representatives made an offer to forfeit €1.5bn in future pay rises if executives at the German carmaker agreed to rein in bonuses, curtail dividends and cancel plans to close factories. VW, however, has stuck with plans to shut plants.
The company on Monday said it respected workers’ rights to take part in warning strikes, adding that it had taken “targeted measures in advance to ensure emergency supplies” and keep the impact on production “as low as possible”.
“How long and how intense this dispute [will be] is up to Volkswagen to decide at the negotiating table,” IG Metall’s Gröger said. The next negotiations are scheduled to take place on December 9.
