Volkswagen Group tells its board how to fix it, unions disagree
Volkswagen Group tells its board how to fix it, unions disagree
大众集团向董事会提交整改方案，工会表示反对
Volkswagen Group is doing well with electric vehicle sales in its home region, but costly tariffs and eroding market share in China and North America have been hurting it badly. Europe’s largest automaker, which also owns brands including Audi, Porsche, Skoda, and Lamborghini, has seen its profit margins evaporate, and yesterday the company’s supervisory board was presented with a plan to ameliorate that.
大众集团在本土市场的电动汽车销售表现尚可，但高昂的关税以及在中国和北美市场份额的流失，正对其造成严重打击。作为欧洲最大的汽车制造商，大众旗下还拥有奥迪、保时捷、斯柯达和兰博基尼等品牌。目前，该公司的利润率已大幅缩水，昨日，公司监事会收到了一份旨在改善这一状况的方案。
An expected call for factory closures and redundancies wasn’t included—at least not in VW Group’s public statement—but according to Reuters, the measure failed anyway in a 12-7 vote. Unlike most automakers, worker unions are extremely powerful at the VW Group. Half of the 20 seats on the supervisory board are appointed by worker councils. Another two seats are spoken for thanks in part to the company’s partial ownership by the German state of Lower Saxony—currently held by that state’s minister of education and minister-president. So while profit has been important, it’s not the only thing that matters to the decision-makers.
大众集团的公开声明中并未包含外界预期的工厂关闭和裁员计划，但据路透社报道，该方案最终仍以 12 票对 7 票的结果被否决。与大多数汽车制造商不同，工会在大众集团拥有极大的话语权。监事会 20 个席位中，有一半由工会委员会任命。另外两个席位则归属于德国下萨克森州政府（该州持有大众部分股份），目前分别由该州的教育部长和州长担任。因此，尽管利润至关重要，但它并非决策者们考量的唯一因素。
Over the years, there have been lengthy fights over any suggestion of redundancies. Lately, VW Group and its unions spent months in negotiations in 2024 before finally agreeing to a plan to cut 35,000 jobs by 2030. That number had scaled up to 50,000 by this March, as the extent of its problems continued to grow. Then, in late June, a German magazine reported that now, 100,000 jobs would go by 2030, along with the unthinkable: closing four German factories, something that has never been done in its history.
多年来，任何关于裁员的提议都会引发旷日持久的争斗。近期，大众集团与工会在 2024 年进行了数月的谈判，最终达成了一项到 2030 年裁员 3.5 万人的计划。随着问题的不断恶化，这一数字在今年 3 月已攀升至 5 万人。随后，一家德国杂志在 6 月下旬报道称，到 2030 年裁员人数将达到 10 万人，并伴随着一项不可思议的举措：关闭四家德国本土工厂，这在大众历史上尚属首次。
However, Volkswagen’s public statement on the restructuring plan makes no mention of job losses or factory closures—at least not directly. But it does call for a heavily edited model lineup, with half as many vehicles offered across all its brands. These will be “concentrated on the most attractive market segments,” VW Group says, which probably means mostly crossovers, now as beloved by European car buyers as their counterparts in the US. To make things simpler for the factories, “offering complexity—for example, the number of available equipment options—will be reduced by up to 75 percent.”
然而，大众关于重组计划的公开声明中并未提及裁员或关闭工厂——至少没有直接提及。但声明确实要求大幅精简车型阵容，将所有品牌的车型数量减半。大众集团表示，这些车型将“集中在最具吸引力的细分市场”，这可能意味着主要是跨界车，因为这类车型目前在欧洲买家中的受欢迎程度已与美国市场相当。为了简化工厂生产流程，“产品复杂性（例如可选配置的数量）将减少高达 75%。”
The proposal also details a mismatch between global demand for VW Group products, at 9 million vehicles a year, and the company’s annual capacity to build 10 million vehicles a year (although it notes that VW has reduced its capacity by 2 million units since COVID). So while the plan doesn’t explicitly say VW will cut jobs and shutter plants, it does involve building fewer cars with less differentiation to them, something that sounds like it’s less labor-intensive. Or did. Assuming Reuters’ sources are correct, it’s time for Blume and his colleagues to think of something else.
该提案还详细说明了大众集团产品全球需求（每年 900 万辆）与公司年产能（1000 万辆）之间的不匹配（尽管大众指出自疫情以来已削减了 200 万辆的产能）。因此，虽然该计划没有明确表示大众将裁员和关厂，但它确实涉及减少汽车产量并降低车型差异化，这听起来对劳动力的需求会减少。或者说，曾经是这样。如果路透社的消息来源准确，那么布鲁姆（Blume）及其同事现在必须另谋他策了。