Industrial dispute | Zwickau VW workers are resisting closure plans

In addition to the VW workers in Zwickau, their colleagues in Chemnitz also protested against the plans of the company's management Photo: dpa/Hendrik Schmidt The trainees at VW in Zwickau are comprehensively educated. In addition to the steps involved in assembling modern electric cars, at least some of them also master the classics of social theory. In any case, Henry Kahle quotes Karl Marx: Profits in capitalist companies would be privatized, while losses would be socialized. “VW’s shareholders don’t want to pull the trigger,” Kahle shouts to his colleagues on Zwickau’s main market, “and in doing so they accept that an entire region will go to the dogs!”

The VW employees in Zwickau do not want to accept that their plant and thus the region is “going to the dogs”. This Monday they took part in a rally on IG Metall's nationwide day of action. The West Saxon location is one of four that VW management is putting at disposal as part of a drastic savings program. There has been a gradual downsizing of jobs for some time now. Protests against this have so far mostly taken place at the gates of the plant, which was built a few kilometers outside the city in the 1990s. Now they want to take the discontent into the city center and the citizens, says Zwickau's IG Metall. "It's no longer just about VW and it's no longer just about the suppliers, but it's about the region," says its first representative Thomas Knabel in front of 1,500 protesters, "and they can't put up with this anymore."

The reasons for this are obvious. Zwickau has a 125-year tradition of vehicle construction and, to a certain extent, has “an automobile gene,” says Constanze Arndt, the non-party mayor, who, in her own words, spoke on an IG Metall stage for the first time this Monday. She emphasized that the welfare and woe of the city, which has a population of around 86,000, is inextricably linked to its largest employer. Without this, "no ball rolls here, no theater stage is used." Retail, restaurants and the real estate industry would not flourish if VW no longer existed, Arndt called out to the employees: "You are the engine that ensures that things move here."

»We can exert ourselves as much as we want. But if the board makes mistake after mistake, the jobs are gone.”

The fact that this threatens to be turned off by the managers at the company's controls and that Zwickau's engine is at risk of damage is extremely infuriating to the employees. “We used to be the showcase factory,” says Mario Albert, head of the works council at VW Zwickau. The plant there was the first location in the group to be completely converted to the production of electric cars. The workforce relearned and adapted to many new processes. This is not rewarded: “We couldn’t have imagined what has now befallen us,” says Albert.

The company management points to collapsed sales and a market for electric cars that is suffering, among other things, from dumping competition from China. But the employees in Zwickau do not want to release management and shareholders from their responsibility. The group paid out two billion euros in dividends in the current year alone, says Henry Kahle from the trainee representative. At the same time, there have been billions in losses in the past due to the emissions scandal or problems with the software for the electric cars. “None of this is our fault,” says Kahle. “We can try as hard as we want,” emphasizes Albert: “But if the board makes mistake after mistake, the jobs will be gone.”

That would not only be fatal for the around 8,000 employees in the VW factory. A biotope of suppliers and service providers has been established around this, which employs tens of thousands of people and is inextricably linked to VW. “We take part in every special shift and every shift extension,” says Ronny Ott, head of the works council at the logistics company Schnellecke, which has worked for the vehicle factory for 35 years and would be directly affected by its closure. “We are a network, we have to stick together,” says Ott, emphasizing that you should “not treat service providers any differently than you treat VW workers.”

At the rally in front of the Zwickau town hall, the social dimension of a potential factory closure became clear. After 1990, mining, the then automobile production at Sachsenring and the textile industry were "buried" in Zwickau, said works council member Uwe Lottes from the supplier SAS Meerane: "This must not happen again 35 years later." Jan Otto, district head of IG Metall in Berlin, Brandenburg and Saxony, also emphasized: "The East has suffered enough." Elisabeth Kaiser, the Federal Government's Eastern Commissioner, described Zwickau with VW as the "industrial heart." East Germany” and called for a “sustainable industrial policy for the East”. The regional IG Metall boss Knabel asked them to describe their impressions from Zwickau at the cabinet table: “These are the people who are responsible for value creation in Germany!”

At the same time, it is about many individual fates. Many of her colleagues' grandparents and parents had already built cars, says shop steward Stephanie Haferkorn. She started an apprenticeship at VW Zwickau in 2010, later started a family and is a car manufacturer with heart and soul. "We want a future here in Zwickau," she said to VW management: "It won't fail because of us."

The “nd.Genossenschaft” belongs to those who read and write it. With your contribution, you ensure that our journalism remains accessible to everyone - without any media corporation, billionaire or paywall.

→ report independently and critically → focus on overlooked topics → give marginalized voices a platform → counter misinformation → initiate and further develop left-wing debates

You can make the difference with “Voluntary Pay” or a cooperative share. You help keep this newspaper alive. So that nd remains.