VW boss Herbert Diess (l) and works council boss Bernd Osterloh.
Volkswagen AG
With a short video, the top employee representative of Germany’s largest industrial group is increasing the pressure in the current collective bargaining round.
In the short film, which was also directed at VW’s HR director Gunnar Kilian – his ex-employee – Osterloh reveals the number of Golf 8s that have not been built and the loss of profit margins.
If nothing moves again in the next negotiation, “warning strikes are possible as early as March 2nd,” is a specific threatening scenario.
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In the stalled collective bargaining negotiations at VW, works council chief Bernd Osterloh appears as an influencer in front of the camera and makes the employer side a lot of steam with a video. The clip, produced on Tuesday and also published on Instagram, sums up the central demands of the employees and is already circulating among thousands of VW employees.
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Before the spontaneously scheduled shooting, the third collective bargaining round at VW ended with no result. IG Metall is calling for a pay increase of four percent retrospectively from January 1, 2021 for 120,000 employees and improvements to the collective leave period introduced in 2019 as well as the stipulation of 1,400 apprenticeship positions per year for the next ten years.
The in-house collective agreement of Volkswagen AG applies to the plants in Wolfsburg, Braunschweig, Hanover, Salzgitter, Emden and Kassel as well as to the Group’s own financial services provider Volkswagen Financial Services AG. The current collective wage agreements were terminated on December 31, 2020.
“Volkswagen is interested in a viable, fair and future-proof deal,” said Arne Meiswinkel, negotiator at Volkswagen AG and Head of Group Personnel Principles and Control. “We want to advance collective bargaining quickly, in a solution-oriented and responsible manner. For this we need a common consensus on the current situation and its effects ”. With the reference to “the current situation”, the employers’ camp means above all the ongoing Corona misery.
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“Volkswagen is shamelessly trying to take advantage of the corona situation”
“Volkswagen did not approach us and shamelessly tried to exploit the corona situation. Now we will prove that we are fully capable of acting even under pandemic conditions, ”said Thorsten Gröger, negotiator of IG Metall Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. The functionary is convinced: “The fact that IG Metall is negotiating for the metal and electrical industry and for Volkswagen at the same time this year strengthens our position. The workforce of these two collective bargaining movements will now fight together for their legitimate claims. The behavior of employers means that we will now mobilize the workers ”.
Gröger emphasizes unequivocally: “Warning strikes are therefore already possible from March 2nd”. And Bernd Osterloh adds: “The employers have already entered the negotiations empty-handed three times – that is now just embarrassing. If the corporate side doesn’t end this game of hide and seek soon, we’ll have to see to it ”.
“I like how Osterloh uses the means of modern social media communication for us,” said a VW employee in a kind of film review with Business Insider. She added with a smile. “What I don’t like is how he uses five large flipchart sheets for a few words in the video, one sheet would have been enough, we have to save”.
VW customers who are waiting for their new Golf 8 car to be delivered will be interested to hear that Osterloh specifically quantifies the number of vehicles in the video that could not be manufactured recently due to missing components: no less than 93,000 units.
And VW buyers, competitors and suppliers, in turn, should listen to the amount of the contribution margin per car, which the head of the employee calls: at least 5,000 euros per compact car.
A spokesman for the VW works council has now contacted Business Insider about the supposed waste of paper. His humorous explanation:
“Mr. Osterloh deliberately only turned the pages on the flipchart and did not tear them off. So we can use the back of the paper again, if necessary also for Osterloh’s next tutoring session. If the employer continues with his perception as before, it will unfortunately be necessary again. But we are in good spirits that the subject matter has meanwhile arrived and is now finally being internalized. “
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