According to Reuters, IG Metall, Germany’s largest trade union, promised to spare no effort to explore various options, including the implementation of a four-day week, in response to Volkswagen’s plan to close factories and abolish job security agreements.
Negotiations between IG Metall and Volkswagen are expected to begin in mid-late October, while workers’ strikes are likely to begin at the end of November.
Thorsten Gr ö ger, IG Metall’s chief negotiator, said the union was urging Volkswagen to advance the negotiations so as not to put workers in a state of long-term fear.
Thorsten Gr ö ger added that if Volkswagen did not engage in constructive negotiations, more than 500000 workers could go on strike.
However, IG Metall said there would be no strike before the end of November and still hoped to find a negotiated solution.
Although IG Metall insisted on a 7 per cent pay rise in the auto industry, when asked if the union would consider working four days a week as an alternative, Christiane Benner, IG Metall’s German president, said it was “feasible” and that the union would spare no effort to explore options.
However, Christiane Benner added that the union could not list details of the proposal without knowing the Volkswagen solution.
“We need forward-looking ideas to identify potential opportunities.
The Volkswagen Group has experienced difficult times and survived successfully before.
” Volkswagen declined to comment on the report about the four-day work week.
Photo: Volkswagen Group, the German state of Lower Saxony is the second largest shareholder in the Volkswagen Group, occupying two of the 20 seats on the company’s supervisory board.
Stephan Weil, governor of Lower Saxony, said in an interview with German broadcaster NDR that there are currently five factories protected by job security in Lower Saxony (a total of six in Germany).
Stephan Weil says Volkswagen must find a way to share the crisis fairly.
Thorsten Groeger, head of the state of Lower Saxony at IG Metall, said that in the previous crisis, the agreement reached between Volkswagen Group and the union was designed to help the company tide over the difficulties and should not be abandoned in this crisis.
In 1993, as part of another cost-cutting initiative, Peter Hartz, a member of the board of directors of Volkswagen Group, reached an agreement with trade unions and labor committees to introduce a four-day working week of 28.
8 hours from 1994, with a 20% reduction in working hours and a smaller wage reduction.
The two-year agreement is widely seen as an innovative model designed to save 30,000 jobs at Volkswagen’s six plants in Germany.
The agreement remained in place over the next few years until it was abandoned by Volkswagen management in 2006, arguing that the model would reduce its competitiveness.
At present, Volkswagen Group faces a number of thorny challenges, including a slowdown in demand for cars, especially electric vehicles, increased competition from China, and what some investors and analysts call a “complex group governance structure.
” such structural problems can slow Volkswagen’s decision-making process in times of crisis.
Last year, Volkswagen produced about 9 million cars, compared with a total production capacity of 14 million.
Volkswagen’s profit margin fell to 2.
3% in the first half of this year, compared with 3.
8% in the same period last year.
As logistics, energy and labor costs rise, it becomes more difficult to improve the returns of Volkswagen brands.
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