Volkswagen began a third round of wage talks on Tuesday amid rising protests from workers at Europe’s largest carmaker over plans to cut labour costs dramatically.
German metalworkers union IG Metall is calling for extensive job guarantees and 4% more pay for the 103,000 people working at VW’s six western German plants, countering management demands for a two-year freeze in wages.
In an unusual move highlighting the difficulties VW faces, the firm has threatened to cut more than 30,000 jobs to achieve 2bn euros ($2.5bn) in personnel cost cuts by ’11.
The cuts are vital as it battles currency headwinds and weak demand in its core markets of Germany, the US and China that forced the company to drop its ’04 operating profit forecast by 600m euros to 1.9bn.
In an interview with the company’s monthly employee newsletter, the head of VW’s main factory in Wolfsburg said that although the plant has a daily production capacity of 3,200 units, only some 2,100 Golf and Bora compacts were being built every day.
“The best paid auto workers with the shortest working hours in the company have to generate the best productivity and quality again,” Dietmar Korzekwa told VW’s ‘Autogramm’, adding that he plans to significantly cut investments at the plant to 1.5bn euros for ’05 to ’09. Some 7,500 workers at VW’s Emden and Kassel plants protested on Monday, according to IG Metall, up from the 1,000 who had demonstrated during the last round.
The trade union has called upon workers to continue exerting pressure with protests on Tuesday outside of the Congress Centre in Hanover, where the two sides are meeting. IG Metall resumes the talks on a day on which papers in Europe said that over 6,000 workers at GM’s German unit Opel might lose their jobs as GM tries to end losses in Europe.
While VW chief executive Bernd Pischetsrieder has repeatedly said the company aims to keep jobs in Germany, he hasn’t shown any signs of compromise.
“Management won’t prevent a strike at the price of not changing things that need to be changed,” he told a German newspaper last week, referring to wages that are often 20% higher than those at German rivals.
“Our personnel costs have to be adjusted to a competitive level.” VW shares were down 1.3% at 33.22 euros at 0815 GMT, matching a decline on the benchmark DAX index . |
