\n\tBy William Wilkes and Sasha Draeger-Mazer<\/p>\n
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\n\tVolkswagen AG Chief Executive Officer Oliver Blume will confront workers on Tuesday over his plans to radically shrink the carmaker, a test of his ability to push through sweeping changes at speed.<\/p>\n
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\n\tBlume and VW brand chief Thomas Sch\u00e4fer are due to present their restructuring plan, which could wipe out as many as 100,000 jobs, at the company\u2019s main Wolfsburg factory. It\u2019s the first of a series of townhall gatherings across Germany in the coming days.<\/p>\n
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\n\tTensions have been running high even before the initial meeting. IG Metall chief Christiane Benner has branded the CEO\u2019s push to slash costs and lift margins to 9% as \u201ccloud cuckoo land.\u201d A local unionist on Monday warned that the group is willing to consider strikes if Blume doesn\u2019t walk back his plans.<\/p>\n
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\n\tBut the 58-year-old manager has made the overhaul the defining test of his tenure. He wants to reduce costs and remake Volkswagen for an industry upended by electric mobility, software and fast-moving rivals from China. The automaker\u2019s special governance means he cannot simply order the cuts, but needs to bring powerful labor leaders and the state of Lower Saxony, which can veto some major decisions, along with him.<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cThere are many enemies, many veto players and little support,\u201d said Wolfgang Schroeder, a political science professor at Kassel University who has studied German labor relations and Volkswagen.<\/p>\n
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\n\tPressure is also coming from above. Porsche SE, the holding company of the billionaire Porsche-Pi\u00ebch family that controls Volkswagen, has urged management to move faster, warning that VW is at a \u201chistoric crossroads.\u201d The clan has its own reason for urgency: waning profits at Volkswagen and sports-car maker Porsche AG are minimizing the dividends it\u2019s long relied on.<\/p>\n
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\n\tVolkswagen\u2019s earnings have been battered by declining sales in China, high expenses in Germany and underused factories. That\u2019s leaving the company with a roughly 30% cost disadvantage to some rivals and at least \u20ac10 billion of overhead to strip out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\tManagement is working on plans to cut another 500,000 vehicles from annual European production capacity, thin managerial ranks and slash the number of models and equipment variants.<\/p>\n
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\n\tThis week, Blume is taking his argument directly to the factory floor: while he and Sch\u00e4fer appear in Wolfsburg, senior executives including Chief Financial Officer Arno Antlitz will fan out across Volkswagen\u2019s German plants to argue that deeper cuts are unavoidable.<\/p>\n
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\n\tWorkers have already agreed to tens of thousands of job reductions, only to be told more is needed. Labor leaders say employees are being asked to pay for years of strategic mistakes on software, EVs and China. Management needs to deliver future job perspectives for workers at all German plants, the company\u2019s top labor official Daniela Cavallo said late Monday in Hanover.<\/p>\n
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\n\tBlume rose to the top in part because he was seen as a conciliator capable of navigating Volkswagen\u2019s rival power centers. His future may now depend on whether he can persuade them to accept decisions they have vowed to resist.<\/p>\n
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\n\tThe CEO faces a \u201cmammoth task,\u201d said Ingo Speich, head of sustainability and corporate governance at Deka Investment.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By William Wilkes and Sasha Draeger-Mazer \u00a0
Volkswagen AG Chief Executive Officer Oliver Blume will confront…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20947],"tags":[35978,1098,6183,47720,17781,21053,42402,57555,5356,57556,31944,38598,57554],"class_list":["post-78488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-volkswagen","tag-china-auto-market","tag-electric-vehicles","tag-german-manufacturing","tag-germany-auto-industry","tag-ig-metall","tag-oliver-blume","tag-porsche-se","tag-thomas-schaumlfer","tag-volkswagen","tag-volkswagen-cost-cuts","tag-volkswagen-job-cuts","tag-vw-restructuring","tag-wolfsburg-factory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}