Mattis Molde
Volkswagen management’s presentation of its plans was not just another announcement, it was a declaration of war. The proposal to close two, even three, plants is a direct threat to all workers and works councils throughout the corporation and, indeed, to their union, the IGMetall, itself. It has been followed by the threat of lay-offs elsewhere, Ford, for example, is calling for 2,900 to go, a quarter of its German workforce.
The conflict at VW
While the company’s message was very clear, laying off more than 10,000 workers, the response from the workforce has been mixed.
In September, there were large meetings at the various plants and shop stewards called for a rally in Hanover. After that, the IG Metall collective bargaining round began. Most of VW’s 125,000 employees in West Germany are covered by the same agreement. The East German workforce and the Osnabrück plant, however, are covered by regional agreements; IG Metall is demanding that they be included in the company-wide agreement. During the national actions in the wage round, VW was discussed, but not with the aim of launching a national campaign against attacks on jobs.
The negotiations on the VW company agreement cover all issues, not just pay. For the third round of negotiations on 19 November, IG Metall and the general works council presented a package that essentially provided for the wage increase from the other districts to be adopted, but not paid out. The money would go into a fund, together with the annual bonuses of employees and management. This would then pay for “socially acceptable job cuts”, but also for lost working hours. IG Metall estimates the savings volume at 1.5 billion euros. No plant would be closed, and staff cuts would continue on a ‘social’ basis, i.e. with high severance payments and partial retirement.
The board member for the VW brand, Thomas Schäfer, rejected the package as insufficient. He is demanding 4 billion euros and points out that 7.5 billion has already been saved in the current cost-cutting programmes, including in materials and logistics. This amount is necessary for investments. What he doesn’t say is that it is necessary above all for the targeted return on investment. The car market in Europe is now 2 million vehicles per year smaller than before Corona. That means 500,000 fewer vehicles for VW.
On 21 November, 5,000 – 6,000 employees, mainly shop stewards, from around the country, came to the group headquarters in Wolfsburg for the third round of negotiations. That was probably the militant core. For the chair of the works council, Daniela Cavallo, and the head of the Lower Saxony branch of IG Metall, Thorsten Gröger, any action, including possible strikes, had the goal of enforcing the proposed waiver package. Gröger threatened: ‘If necessary, it will be an industrial dispute the likes of which the Federal Republic has not seen in decades.’
The bureaucracy’s dilemma
Of course, VW’s 140,000 employees are certainly capable of that. This industrial dispute could be even more intense if the IG Metall leadership had not deliberately sought a quick conclusion to the regional agreement, the thousands of employees at VW’s own temporary employment agency, who work in plant and production logistics and at suppliers, could be drawn into the fight. Schäfer wants to save 7.5 billion from that group, which will cost tens of thousands of jobs and mean even lower wages for already lower-paid workers.
The IG Metall leadership has not only ended the wage struggle in the area and thus the possibility of carrying out strikes there and taking the offensive on the issue of jobs and wage increases. It has also supported outsourcing to the lower-wage areas at VW. The well-being of the big three German carmakers has always been the most important thing for the union’s national leadership. This also ensures that the bureaucracy keeps its supervisory board seats and maintains a stable power structure within the union.
In a global industry, social partnership also means representing the interests of the global corporation against the competition from other monopolies. To this end, they will do almost anything: the restructuring of domestic production to focus on fat SUVs or other luxury vehicles that are inefficient as a means of transport; exhaust gas fraud; no, or only limited, solidarity when the company comes into conflict with foreign workforces; withdrawal of support for the American automobile union UAW to organise VW workforces there.
It also includes close collaboration with the government. In Brussels, IG Metall fights together with the government and the automotive industry association for the optimal regulation for German manufacturers at the expense of the environment (exhaust gas scandal), publicly supports the government’s rearmament policy and tacitly supports the associated social cuts. When metalworkers‘ unions around the world protest against the genocide in Gaza, IG Metall in Germany does its best to support it.
Social partnership in crisis
It is clear to the VW management that their general attack not only has to be directed at jobs and wages, but also questions the partnership with the reformist bureaucracy in works councils and the union. Left critics also see this crisis coming, but it has two deeper causes that are often overlooked.
a) Crisis of the trade union
The crisis of the IG Metall accelerated with its agreement to the Agenda 2010. After initial half-hearted protests – after all, it was against a social-democratic chancellor – and a one-day illegal general strike in the industrial city of Schweinfurt, which showed what could have been, IG Metall decided to stop all resistance under pressure from the meeting of the general works councils of the car companies. The subsequent attacks on the unemployed forced them to accept any job. A huge low-wage sector emerged, and the core workforce was forced to make more and more concessions under the threat of falling into this sector.
“Plant security” contracts, with conditional protection against dismissal and concessions in the event of outsourcing and relocations, became fashionable. Each workforce fought for itself and against the others, especially within the same company. Solidarity no longer meant fighting together, but rather giving up together, or it was abandoned altogether in favour of everyone fighting against each other. International solidarity, always weak, came to an almost complete standstill. Within companies, the respective workforce was divided into permanent staff with old contracts and those with new, lower-level contracts. There are agency workers from their own or other companies, there are plant contracts, i.e. companies that take over parts of the business, including production, on their own account. Anyone who takes up work in production at a car manufacturer does so for a different company. The path to becoming a permanent member of the workforce is not, if at all, through union struggle, but through grovelling.
b) Crisis of German imperialism
The trouble at VW, the biggest German company, is also a symbol of the crisis of German industry. Few countries base their influence in the world as much on their industrial monopolies as Germany. The worldwide economic crisis of capitalism is leading to intensified struggles for markets. The auto industry is one of the central industries, with a global division of labour, with monopolies concentrated in a few imperialist countries. Germany not only has the carmaker with the highest turnover, but also three of the top ten – more than any other country. The political and military reorganisation of the world will also challenge this.
The intensified conflicts between the imperialist blocs of the USA, China, Russia and the EU are not only a problem for an industry that has become globalised, they also make it highly unlikely that Europe and Germany will be able to sustain a disproportionate share of the international auto monopolies. If the worldwide crisis then causes a stagnation of automobile production – and in the case of Europe even a shrinking market – then it becomes clear that the plan of the bosses to cushion the cuts can only be a stopgap.
Thus, it is not the fault of a single management when the entire industry is in crisis. Twenty years ago, as explicitly stated in the Lisbon Agenda, German imperialism, together with the EU, wanted to challenge the USA. The rise of German industry was mainly at the expense of its European partners, but it could not prevent the rise of the Chinese.
In recent years, VW’s ‘in China for China’ concept has also allowed many additional cars to be exported to China. It was Germany’s strong position that allowed it to maintain a strong automotive industry in Germany while also becoming the largest global player – with Daimler, BMW and VW at the forefront. Germany’s weakness forces VW to choose between the two. However, it is clear that it will be the employees who will pay the price.
What perspective?
The destructive drive of the corporate leadership must be stopped at all costs, jobs must be defended. But this cannot be done through IG Metall’s policy of sacrifices. Until now, it has gone along with a creeping downward adjustment and now offers a somewhat accelerated one. Even massive state aid, as called for by IG Metall chairwoman Christiane Benner after the auto summit, or as listed in the joint declaration with Gesamtmetall, would not solve the fundamental problem of the German auto industry (or of German imperialism).
Even if IG Metall district leader Gröger is now calling for action, as long as the bureaucracy sticks to its policy of siding with capital and the government, and any actions are only ‘accompanying negotiations’, the perspective will be for the renewed subjugation and weakening of IG Metall.
Ultimately, jobs can only be defended if factories threatened with closure are occupied. The plants must switch production to environmentally and climate-friendly products and processes under workers’ control. This must be paid for out of state funds, the billions that have been thrown into the corporations’ pockets for years should now be used for this purpose.
The warning strikes on 2 December show the potential of the workers at VW. The next step must be to stop negotiations that only deal with the extent of the concessions that the workers at VW should make! Militant trade unionists must take the lead at general assemblies to declare the negotiations a failure and to initiate the ballot as quickly as possible in order to take the struggle to the point of strikes and occupations.
In IG Metall, we need a joint struggle for all jobs at VW and in the entire metal industry. We must fight against the bureaucracy’s policy of negotiating and settling each company individually, with wage concessions and job losses, and instead fight together to prevent the workers from being saddled with the burden of the crisis again. We need regional action conferences to agree on joint actions, action committees made up of delegates from the companies, responsible only to their workforce and subject to recall at any time.
No more trust in the union leadership, who are partly responsible for the disaster! The rank and file must control the goals and steps of the struggle! All militant unionists must now coordinate action to implement this perspective in the different plants and within the union.