What’s behind Germany’s VW worker strike
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 December 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
From the BBC World Service: Thousands of workers at Volkswagen’s German factories are staging walkouts as the carmaker faces major financial woes. VW has floated wage cuts of 10%, thousands of job cuts and plant closures, but isn’t the only German automaker facing headwinds. And later on today’s show, Belfast shipbuilder Harland & Wolff — which famously (and infamously) made the Titanic — faces bankruptcy for a second time.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In Germany, workers at Volkswagen are on strike. Live from the UK, this is the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service. I'm Gideon Long in for Leanna Byrne. Good morning to you. |
| 0:14.2 | Workers at nine Volkswagen factories across Germany are on strike today over the carmaker's plans to lay off thousands of people and cut |
| 0:21.0 | pay. The BBC's Damien McGuinness has more. Hello Damien, thanks for joining us. |
| 0:25.5 | Pleasure. Good morning, Gideon. So we start by telling us why this strike is happening today. |
| 0:30.5 | Traditionally, in German companies, particularly in a company like VW, jobs are guaranteed and there have |
| 0:36.3 | been in the past rules against closing factories. Now all that's changed because of VW, jobs are guaranteed and there have been in the past rules against closing factories. |
| 0:39.2 | Now, all that's changed because of VW's financial problems. |
| 0:43.1 | And the company says in order to ensure the company's financial security in the future, |
| 0:49.5 | there has to be a 10% wage cut rather than wage rises and mass redundancies are threatened. Maybe tens of |
| 0:56.0 | thousands of jobs could go, according to some documents. And they're even suggesting plant closures |
| 1:00.5 | in Germany, which would be the first time that such a thing has been even suggested in the |
| 1:06.0 | company's almost 90 year history. There have been strikes in the past, but this would be the first major |
| 1:12.4 | strike in years, really. But I think it's also speaking to a broader problem within the German |
| 1:18.1 | car-making sector. So VWs hit hard, but also BMW, as well as Mercedes-Benz. I mean, all these |
| 1:24.5 | companies are really struggling, and that's because of a number of issues. |
| 1:28.6 | Firstly, stiff competition from China. The other problem is, of course, a drop in demand globally, |
| 1:33.9 | but particularly in Europe. So sales are really down, so that's hit profits here. And, of course, |
| 1:40.0 | costs are quite high in Germany. So if you've got a company which you're relying on plants within |
| 1:44.6 | Germany itself, that's always going to be a challenge. And this is day one of the strike. Do we have any |
| 1:48.9 | sense of how long they might continue? Well, this is what they call a warning strike. So what's |
| 1:52.8 | happening with this round of strikes is at nine of the ten plants across Germany, workers are |
| 1:58.6 | downing tools for two hours at a time. And so it's more like a start |
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