Accompanied by new warning strikes, VW and IG Metall will meet in Wolfsburg on Monday for their fourth round of collective bargaining. There were no signs of an agreement in the dispute over wage cuts, plant closures and redundancies. The union now wants to increase the pressure once again with a second nationwide warning strike directly on the day of negotiations: In nine of the ten German VW plants, the assembly lines are to come to a temporary standstill.
VW plans tough cuts
In the collective bargaining round, the first issue is the pay of around 120,000 employees at the Volkswagen AG plants, where a separate in-house wage agreement applies. In addition, there are more than 10,000 employees at VW Saxony, for whom an alignment with the company pay scale was agreed in 2021. VW rejects any increase and is demanding a ten percent pay cut due to the Group's difficult situation.
What makes the negotiations complicated is that there is also a parallel dispute over job security, which VW has terminated after more than 30 years. Plant closures and compulsory redundancies are on the table. In addition, VW wants to take on fewer trainees and reduce the pay of temporary workers, who previously received a supplement at VW, to the normal level of temporary work.
