Tuesday, November 9th, 2021
“Fear is a bad advisor”
This appeases employee worries
With statements about a possible job cuts, Volkswagen boss Diess caused unrest in the workforce. In response to this, he reassured in an in-house video: There is no plan to cut 30,000 jobs.
In the struggle to change the pace of the transformation, Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess is trying to relieve employees of worries about their jobs. “Fear is a bad advisor. Nobody should be afraid,” he said in a video interview published in the Wolfsburg company’s employee portal.
“We are a social enterprise, we have declared job security until 2029.” However, Volkswagen has to face competition from the US electric car manufacturer Tesla, which is building a new factory 200 kilometers from Wolfsburg in Grünheide near Berlin. Diess emphasized that there was no plan to cut 30,000 jobs.
“We are discussing and speaking with the works council about a future plan for Wolfsburg. What does Wolfsburg have to look like in 2030, 2035 so that it is future-proof?” It is not primarily about job cuts, but about competitiveness in the new world. “Some old jobs” would certainly be lost in the process. Diess was confident that the main plant in Wolfsburg – employees and managers – would be able to cope with the change. A jolt is necessary for this.
Diess had caused unrest in the workforce with statements about possible job cuts. The works council then massively criticized him. Employees had said that trust in Diess had been damaged. Most recently, the state of Lower Saxony as the second largest VW shareholder had also shown distance. This threatened the CEO of the supervisory board with a loss of support. Behind the scenes, according to insiders, the chairman of the supervisory board, Hans Dieter Pötsch, is trying to smooth things over so that Diess can stay in office.