By Nurat Uthman
Thousands of Volkswagen workers went on strike Monday in an escalating industrial dispute, with unions warning that the crisis-hit German auto giant is intent on making mass layoffs and closing factories.
Waving signs reading “You want war, we are ready!” and the red flags of the powerful IG Metall Union, employees at plants across the country walked out over management plans to make huge cuts.
VW has been hit hard by high manufacturing costs at home, a stuttering shift to electric vehicles and tough competition in key market China.
The VW group — which owns 10 brands from Audi and Porsche to Skoda and Seat — said it “respects workers’ rights” and believes in “constructive dialogue” in a bid to reach “a lasting solution that is collectively supported”.
It also said that it had taken “measures to guarantee urgent deliveries” during the strike action.
IG Metall and the works council have fought to protect jobs since VW announced in September that it was weighing the unprecedented step of shutting some plants in Germany, where it has around 120,000 employees.
“Our colleagues are angry. Their jobs have been under threat for three months and they have been waiting for a chance to finally show what they think,” an IG Metall spokesman at the VW factory in the eastern city of Zwickau told AFP.
Thousands of workers marched alongside a line of new electric cars leaving the Zwickau plant as part of the industrial action, with walkouts also observed at plants from Hanover to VW’s historic headquarters of Wolfsburg.
To the sound of cheering crowds, blaring horns and banging drums, Works Council chief Daniela Cavallo told a rally that VW’s bosses were seeking to “sell out Germany as an industrial location” and strip employees of their rights.
But she said the “Volkswagen family” was united and had “huge stamina” to fight a drawn-out industrial dispute.
IG Metall announced at the weekend that industrial action would get underway Monday with a series of “warning strikes”, which are short walks-outs, after the company had last week rejected the union’s proposals for protecting jobs.
