VW CEO Warns Situation Is ‘More than Critical’

The situation at Volkswagen is extremely tense, CEO Oliver Blume said ahead of a series of meetings with employee representatives, as workers fear widespread job cuts, according to the DPA news agency.

“The situation is more than critical”, Blume said in an interview published on the company’s intranet. He said Volkswagen was still capable of taking action but urgently needed to do so. While the automaker’s operating margin of 3.8% was solid given the difficult circumstances, it was “nowhere near enough to generate the funds needed in the long term for new technologies, new products and our sites”, he said. Blume added that the cost-cutting measures taken so far were insufficient.

Blume had already warned of further cuts last month, when he said Volkswagen’s cost targets implied that up to 50,000 additional jobs could be at risk. He stressed that the figure was not a fixed target but an indication of the scale of the savings required. The company had previously announced plans to cut about 50,000 jobs by 2030, affecting both the Volkswagen brand and subsidiaries including Audi and Porsche. If the additional cuts were made in full, the total number of jobs affected could reach about 100,000.

Volkswagen management is planning nine meetings with employee representatives through the end of August. The first will take place in Wolfsburg on 25 August, followed by meetings in Emden and Zwickau the next day. Further meetings will be held in Salzgitter, Braunschweig, Dresden, Chemnitz and Baunatal near Kassel, with the final meeting taking place in Hanover on 31 August.

(tasr, dpa)