VW may cut jobs to pay huge fine
Print Edition
VOLKSWAGEN may have to cut jobs in the United States as well as Europe and other countries depending on how big a fine has to be paid for its manipulation of diesel emissions tests, the carmaker’s top labor official told a meeting of 20,000 workers at its German headquarters yesterday.
The US Justice Department has sued VW for up to US$46 billion for breaching US environmental laws, while there is still no fix for nearly 600,000 cars affected in the US almost six months after the scandal broke.
The extent to which VW may be forced to cut jobs to help meet the costs of “Dieselgate” depends “decisively” on the level of fines, VW’s works councils Chairman Bernd Osterloh said yesterday at the meeting of workers in Wolfsburg that was also attended by the carmaker’s top managers.
“Should the future viability of Volkswagen be endangered by an unprecedented financial penalty, this will have dramatic social consequences,” said Osterloh, who also sits on VW’s 20-member supervisory board.
Osterloh, speaking to workers at VW’s flagship plant about the emissions crisis and structural changes, called on the US authorities to consider the risk of possible job cuts in deciding on penalties.
“We very much hope that the US authorities also have an eye for this social and employment-political dimension,” he said.
Europe’s largest automaker employs over 600,000 people at around 120 factories worldwide, including 270,000 in Germany. Its US plant in Chattanooga, Tennnessee, employs about 2,200 people.
Speaking at the Wolfsburg meeting Chief Executive Matthias Mueller said the scandal would inflict “substantial and painful” financial damage on the carmaker, without elaborating.
VW last year set aside 6.7 billion euros (US$7.39 billion) to cover the expected costs of recalling about 11 million diesel vehicles globally. It has postponed the release of its 2015 results by more than a month until April 28 to better assess the financial implications of the crisis.
“The software manipulations and its consequences will keep us busy for a long time,” Mueller said yesterday, adding that it would take years to determine the full extent of the financial impact of the scandal.
Separately, German prosecutors said yesterday that they have widened their investigation into VW diesel emissions scandal and are now targeting 11 more employees.
Klaus Ziehe from the state prosecutor’s office in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, which is leading the German case against VW, said 17 people are now being investigated, up from six previously.
The Paris prosecutor’s office also said yesterday that France has opened a formal investigation into suspected “aggravated fraud” by VW.
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