Agreement at Volkswagen: Saving alone does not create a future

Days before, the VW board, union and politicians had struggled in vain for a compromise, and on Friday the supervisory board meeting lasted until late in the evening. All the more surprising was the news that Volkswagen boss Oliver Blume's drastic savings plan had been approved - unanimously, in fact. And this despite the fact that he is still not paving a courageous path into the future of the large car manufacturer - and is placing the crisis heavily on the backs of the employees.

Volkswagen is facing clear-cutting. More than 100,000 jobs will be cut worldwide, around twice as many as originally planned. The end of the four threatened plants in Germany, in Emden, Hanover, Zwickau and Neckarsulm, is not sealed, but it is anything but off the table.

Now one can be surprised that the VW works council and representatives of IG Metall simply agreed to this. They are making every effort to appear as responsible actors who have prevented an escalation. And they are apparently hoping for a good negotiating position when it comes to the continued existence of the factories listed.

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Was that really responsible in view of a corporate board that is all too happy to consciously place its threatening visions in the press before speaking to the workers? Who has so far been hardly willing to make any concessions? IG Metall will still have to prove that when it has to defend Zwickau, Emden, Hanover and Neckarsulm.

Above all, it is tragic that despite all the threatening gestures from the board and all the fear from the employees, no plausible plan for a sustainable business model has yet been identified. If the transformation of the locations costs jobs in production, then new ones would have to be created in other areas. And VW needs ideas for future markets and technologies more than ever.

It's just that the corporate managers show no signs of such ambition, and no such ambition at all. That has to change - and the union and politicians at the federal and state levels should also provide stronger impulses.