VW management defended its stricter austerity measures at the company meeting in Wolfsburg. “We still have a year, maybe two years, to turn things around. But we have to use this time,” said Group CFO Arno Antlitz in front of more than 10,000 employees at the VW plant. “We have been spending more money on the brand than we earn for some time now. That’s not going to work in the long term.”
VW wants to use the savings to free up the funds needed for new products. “We need money now to invest heavily,” said brand boss Thomas Schäfer. “If we now manage to reduce our costs sustainably and invest in a model fireworks display that the competition and customers have never seen before, then we will be the ones who have created the conditions for the next generations here in Germany to be able to enjoy Volkswagen can work.”
Protest of the workforce
The management board was greeted with sharp protests from employees. VW did not provide any new details about the tightened savings plans on Monday at the invitation of the works council. Europe’s largest carmaker had announced that it would further tighten the savings plan at its core VW brand in view of the worsening situation.
A plant closure in Germany and redundancies are no longer ruled out. The works council and IG Metall had announced considerable resistance, and the state of Lower Saxony, which has a stake in VW, called on the carmaker to avoid plant closures.
With regard to the locations, Antlitz referred to overcapacity. In Europe, two million fewer cars are currently being sold per year than before the corona pandemic. And that is unlikely to change. For VW, with a market share of around a quarter in Europe, that means: “We are missing the sales of around 500,000 cars, the sales for around two plants. And that has nothing to do with our products or poor sales performance. The market is simply no longer there.”
VW did not provide any information about possible locations that could close. The group had previously stated that plant closures would only be the last resort if rapid countermeasures were not taken. VW operates car plants in Wolfsburg, Emden, Osnabrück, Hanover, Zwickau and Dresden, as well as component factories in Kassel, Salzgitter, Braunschweig and Chemnitz.
