Collective bargaining: IG Metall: VW plans to freeze salaries until 2030

Wolfsburg. According to the metal industry union, VW employees are threatened with zero pay for years.

There are plans to freeze the salaries of more than 660,000 employees worldwide until 2030, writes IG Metall in a statement on its website. The “Süddeutsche Zeitung” had previously reported on it.

“The European and Global Group Works Council (E/WKBR) informed the workforce today on the intranet about the group board’s plans,” the statement says. The company's board of directors has "instructed human resources managers worldwide to go 'zero rounds by 2030', i.e. to freeze the current wage level and suspend any wage increases." This new requirement is already valid and has been in effect since the beginning of October.

IG Metall criticized the VW Group as breaking with previous practice, which always included inflation compensation in global personnel cost budgets and also continually factored in wage increases.

The union fears real wage losses of at least ten percent if the plans are implemented.

Negotiations on a new collective agreement are expected to begin in the Volkswagen Group at the end of November. According to IG Metall, negotiations are taking place over both the VW in-house tariff and the area tariff for the metal and electrical industry, which applies to Audi, MAN and Porsche, among others. The union is demanding five percent more money.

The European and Global Group Works Council called the company's actions absurd and pointed to the employers' lack of positioning for collective bargaining. The works councils recalled that personnel costs only made up a fraction of the sales costs. A statement from Volkswagen was initially not available.

Just under a month ago, Volkswagen terminated almost all collective agreements before the upcoming negotiations. The group's board of directors wants to cut 50,000 jobs worldwide in the coming years - in addition to previous reduction plans within the group. However, concrete programs must first be negotiated with the employees. In addition, the future of the VW plants in Emden, Hanover and Zwickau as well as the Audi site in Neckarsulm beyond the years 2031 to 2034 is open.

During the 2024 collective bargaining negotiations, in addition to job cuts, there was a zero round for 130,000 VW employees. Similar to the degree in the metal and electrical industry, a salary increase of five percent flows into a fund in two stages and not into the employees' accounts.