The works council and IG Metall have long accused the Volkswagen boss of catastrophic communication about his savings plans. Now the employees are accusing Oliver Blume of fueling a jealous debate with false claims - he is putting "confused stuff" into circulation.
In the struggle for further sharp austerity measures at Volkswagen, the fronts are becoming hardened. The employee side has been accusing the board of directors around CEO Oliver Blume of bad style for months, for example because the employees primarily found out about the drastic cuts plans from the media. After almost all collective agreements were terminated on Wednesday, IG Metall district manager Thorsten Gröger complained on Friday morning that the way it was done was “disrespectful towards its own employees”. Just hours later, the union and works council followed up. “CEO is spreading crazy stuff,” it said in a joint statement.
The employee representatives are bothered by statements made by the VW boss in interviews that have created an “unbearable situation”. Among other things, the workforce is “falsely assumed to have far more vacation entitlement than the vast majority of people in this country.”
Blume indulges in a “confused distortion of the facts.” In the interview with The Pioneer portal, the CEO brought up higher weekly working hours or fewer vacation days as an alternative to wage cuts. “We still have 36 days of vacation in the Volkswagen Group today,” said Blume. “That’s simply wrong,” said the employees indignantly.
For full-time positions, employees have 30 days of vacation. There is also the option of converting an additional payment into days off, as a works council spokesman explained to ntv.de. The “tariff additional remuneration” therefore amounts to 27.5 percent of an average monthly income in August. Instead of having the money paid out, employees can convert it into six days off. Under certain circumstances, the employer can decide when the days off are taken, emphasize the employee representatives.
“Highly embarrassing”
Only around half of the employees take advantage of the opportunity to buy the six additional days. “The mere statement that there is a kind of identical number of vacation days across the company reveals ignorance of the matter,” write the union and the works council. "If you then decide on the 36 days as a statement, you would have to say that for certain groups of beneficiaries in the area tariff of the metal and electrical industry it is 38 days."
In addition, the employee representatives see themselves as “vicarious agents of the board”. When asked why, among other things, almost all collective agreements were terminated, the VW boss replied: "The world has changed significantly in the last two years, which is why there is now this revision. The employee side has also requested this. We are doing it on both sides." Blume is claiming that "employees and the board of directors are currently in a state of unity, brushing off the collective bargaining compromise that was laboriously achieved in 2024 in order to now make new cuts at the expense of the workforce by mutual agreement," IG Metall and the works council are outraged.
Blume's statements are "extremely embarrassing," says works council boss Daniela Cavallo. "I ask myself the question: Did this happen out of ignorance or was it purely intentional?" IG Metall district leader Gröger goes one step further: "Oliver Blume's claim that the employee side would tolerate the termination of collective agreements is not only adventurous, but a deliberate distortion of the facts." The distance between the employees and “this CEO” has rarely been greater than it is today.
