Automotive industry | Kretschmer's plan for "Auto-Union" is met with skepticism

Cars have also recently been dismantled at the VW plant in Zwickau. Intact components like this engine are offered as spare parts. Photo: dpa/Hendrik Schmidt The plan to found a new "Auto-Union" in Saxony, with which Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) wants to save the threatened VW plant in Zwickau, has met with cautious reactions in the state parliament. In particular, aspects such as the wage cuts and longer working hours for employees brought into play by Kretschmer were met with a lot of criticism.

Susanne Schaper, chairwoman of the left-wing parliamentary group in the state parliament, spoke of a “plan in which the employees should pay and everyone else should hope.” Henning Homann, parliamentary group leader of the co-governing SPD, warned the coalition partner CDU against encroaching on collective bargaining autonomy and co-determination: "In order to have us on your side, this must be guaranteed." There will be "no return with us" to the low-wage policies of previous Saxon state governments.

In the debate requested by the left-wing faction, Kretschmer defended his move to save the plant, which has 8,000 employees. The situation in the German automobile industry is “extremely dramatic,” he said; Even in the VW Group, “not all plants have a future.” According to the group's board of directors, the Zwickau plant will no longer be utilized competitively from 2031; there is a threat of closure. In view of this, "Saxony must take its fate into its own hands," said Kretschmer, emphasizing that the employees in Zwickau want to "continue building high-quality cars."

According to Kretschmer's plans, the Zwickau factory is to be taken over by a new company and made competitive, for example through innovations such as the use of humanoid robots, but also through new pay models and the exit from the VW tariff model. At issue is, for example, unpaid Saturday work. The aim must be to be able to compete with locations such as Mladá Boleslav (Czech Republic) or Poznań (Poland) in terms of wage costs. The CDU politician emphasized that the employees should “continue to receive collective wages”; but more flexibility is needed.

The union immediately rejected this aspect of Kretschmer's proposal. It is important that the state government takes part in the efforts to save the plant, said Jan Otto, district manager of IG Metall in Berlin, Brandenburg and Saxony. However, “longer working hours and wage suppression are completely the wrong instrument.” His Zwickau colleague Thomas Knabel added that they were resisting "all attempts to explain the employees as part of the problem at Volkswagen."

»The core of all efforts must be to bring competitive models onto the market. That is the task of the company and not of ministries or state chancelleries.

There was also headwind in the state parliament. BSW MP Bernd Rudolph explained that the employees had “made their contribution long ago”; The Zwickau plant meets the group's cost targets. The Green Party politician Wolfram Günther noted that VW had already terminated collective agreements, which resulted in financial cuts for employees.

Schaper criticized Kretschmer for not making any cuts in the billion-dollar bonuses for management, and calculated that even halving wages would only make each individual car five percent cheaper. Alluding to the logo of the historic Auto-Union, which consisted of four intertwined rings, the left-wing politician said that Kretschmer had added a fifth ring: "a belt that the employees should tighten."

The CDU politician uses the term “Auto-Union” to refer to a construct that was created in 1932 to save the Saxon vehicle manufacturers Horch, DKW, Wanderer and Audi, which were threatened with bankruptcy. The name is historically loaded because Auto-Union became part of the Nazi armaments industry and exploited thousands of concentration camp prisoners and forced laborers.

The initiator for its founding shortly before the Nazis came to power was the then Saxon State Bank. Wolfram Günther emphasized that this was also the largest shareholder and initially held 75 and later over 90 percent of the share capital. In Kretschmer's considerations, however, it was "completely unclear who should go in with what money," criticized the Green politician. The Prime Minister had previously emphasized in the debate that there was "no talk about us taking over the company or wanting to participate in it."

In general, Kretschmer's considerations still left too many questions unanswered, Rudolph also noted. It needs to be clarified who the investors are, which vehicles will be built and where the orders should come from and what role the VW Group is intended to play. Only when there is a concrete industrial policy concept can conditions for the workforce, for example, be negotiated and “if necessary, the participation of the Free State can also be considered,” said the BSW MP.

In any case, the problem is deeper, said SPD parliamentary group leader Homann. In Europe there is excess capacity in the automotive industry for half a million cars. The “core of the effort” must therefore be to bring new, competitive models onto the market. Homann added: "That is the task of the company, not of ministries or state chancelleries."

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