Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess is getting wind of unions in Germany. They believe that the CEO pays too little attention to employees in his attempt to prepare Volkswagen for an EV future.
Diess believes that Volkswagen must reform on a large scale in order to be able to compete with a competitor such as Tesla in the future, Reuters reports. Earlier, for example, there was already mention of a potential loss of 30,000 jobs. The unions are of course not happy with that and would also not be happy with Diess’ management style and vision for the future.
The future of Diess is said to have been discussed among the main shareholders of Volkswagen, including Porsche SE and the German state of Lower Saxony. It is now clear that the Porsche-Piëch family, which owns the Porsche SE holding company, will continue to support Diess. “Nothing has changed in his position,” they told the news agency.
Diess’ concerns are not only based on a vision for the future, but also simply on facts. For example, it recently became clear that the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg, to which the concerns mainly relate, is at its lowest level since 1958. This is of course mainly due to the chip shortage, but according to Diess, a lot must also change structurally. For example, Tesla, which will also produce in Germany, takes ten hours to build a car. At the Volkswagen factory in Zwickau, that takes more than thirty hours, with the ambition to reduce it to twenty next year.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl