Clause in the collective agreement: Employees want to force the VW board to hold talks

After the VW supervisory board agreed on stricter austerity measures, the employee side wants to force management to hold a review meeting. To this end, IG Metall is drawing on a clause from the future collective agreement that the actors agreed on in December 2024. The collective bargaining committee decided this unanimously, said Lower Saxony IG Metall district manager Thorsten Gröger. “We are now calling on the company to come to the table, explain itself and talk to us about how and why this collective agreement will be adhered to.”

For the employees, everything stays as it is. Invoking the clause does not change the provisions of the collective agreement and does not terminate it, said the trade unionist. Employment security is also not affected. "But it is an obligation when one side demands that the other side also come to the table," said Gröger. The expectation is that the discussions will take place this quarter, i.e. by the end of September.

The VW works council's newspaper speaks of "persistently disastrous communication." »The concessions made by the workforce from the 2024 dispute were not made for free; they were made in confidence in the promises. “We therefore expect these agreements to remain in place,” said VW works council boss Daniela Cavallo.

In December 2024, after months of struggle, employees and the board agreed on a collective agreement, which included, among other things, the reduction of 35,000 jobs. In return, the board promised an employment guarantee until the end of 2030 and models for the Emden, Zwickau and Hanover locations. Experts doubted whether the agreement would last. "In the end, despite everything, it's probably just a short-term, expensive peace," Helena Wisbert, a professor specializing in the automotive industry, told SPIEGEL at the time.

The contract can be terminated at the earliest at the end of 2030. The included revision clause states that both sides can request a review meeting once a quarter if the economic conditions have changed.