Conflict erupts between Volkswagen and the powerful German metalworkers' union IG Metall.

All employees of Europe's leading carmaker have been called to suspend work indefinitely starting tomorrow to oppose the thousands of job cuts planned by the group. A first step in a movement that could take on unprecedented proportions if the company's top management and employee representatives fail to reach an agreement on cost-cutting measures to restructure the crisis-ridden group.

At least that’s what IG Metall has said, threatening the “toughest fight Volkswagen has ever seen” . All this in the midst of the campaign for early elections in Germany. “Warning strikes will start on Monday in all factories,” Thorsten Gröger, negotiator for the metalworkers’ union, said in a press release. The period of social dialogue that Germany considers mandatory ended for 120,000 employees of the brand at midnight on Friday with a standoff that led to the almost inevitable move announced by the union.

"If necessary, this will be the toughest collective bargaining battle Volkswagen has ever known," Gröger warned, holding management "responsible at the negotiating table for the length and intensity of the confrontation." Volkswagen immediately responded by trying to reconnect. The Wolfsburg group said it "respects the rights of employees" and believes in "constructive dialogue," according to the principle of codetermination, to "achieve a sustainable and collectively supported solution."

Words that have not yet made an impression on workers. The entire Volkswagen group has ten car manufacturing plants in Germany and around 300,000 employees, including 120,000 from the VW brand, the one most affected by the savings plan. A project for which IG Metall has said it is ready "for a social conflict that has not occurred in the Federal Republic for decades".

The leading European manufacturer launched an unprecedented cost hunt in September, aiming to save several billion euros to improve its competitiveness. Three negotiations between management and unions took place and "the difference between the positions - according to Ig Metall - is still enormous". The gap widened further with the rejection by management, on Friday, of a union counter-proposal aimed at reducing costs without having to close factories in Germany. The biggest risk is in fact that of the closure of three plants in the country, for the first time in the company's history.

(Online Union)

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