VW Said to Cut 30,000 Jobs, Save $3.9 Billion in Labor Pact

Volkswagen AG reached a landmark agreement with workers to cut as many as 30,000 jobs globally and save 3.7 billion euros ($3.9 billion) in expenses as the company tries...

Volkswagen AG reached a landmark agreement with workers to cut as many as 30,000 jobs globally and save 3.7 billion euros ($3.9 billion) in expenses as the company tries to claw back from the emissions-cheating scandal and invest in electric vehicles.

Reducing headcount by nearly 5 percent will come through attrition as the automaker agreed to refrain from forced layoffs until 2025, the Wolfsburg, Germany-based company said on Friday. After months of intense talks, labor and management agreed on a package to balance cost-cutting with investment as the auto industry shifts away from traditional combustion engines and adapts to car-sharing services and self-driving technologies.
“This is a big step forward, maybe the biggest in the company’s history,” VW brand chief Herbert Diess said at a press conference in Wolfsburg. “All manufacturers must rebuild themselves because of the imminent changes for the industry. We need to brace for the storm.”

The labor agreement is critical to Volkswagen’s efforts to accelerate restructuring at its biggest unit and emerge from the worst crisis in its history. It also allows the carmaker to create more jobs in newer technologies by retraining workers at traditional factories and hiring software engineers and battery specialists. The moves highlight the changes sweeping the auto industry as old-school metal stamping and mechanical expertise make way for electronics and digital technology.

The VW brand is at the center of Volkswagen’s changes. The unit accounts for almost half of the group’s sales and was struggling even before the emissions crisis erupted last year, tarnishing the marque’s reputation and burdening the 12-brand group with at least 18.2 billion euros in costs for fines and repairs.

Volkswagen shares rose 0.4 percent to 118 euros at 3:56 p.m. in Frankfurt, reducing the drop since the scandal broke in September 2015 to 27 percent.
Electric Expansion

The deal was a prerequisite for Volkswagen’s plans to push ahead with investment in new models and upgrading factories. The labor talks, which started in June, went down to the wire, with the supervisory board meeting on Friday to approve the company’s budget for the coming years as it pushes to sell as many as 3 million electric vehicles a year by 2025 and expand in services like ride-sharing.

Volkswagen is under pressure to reduce annual capital expenditures, which currently stand at 12 billion euros, making the company one of the biggest corporate spenders in the world. The company said Friday that it plans to reduce capital expenditures to 6 percent of sales by 2020 from 6.9 percent last year.

In a concession to workers, the manufacturer agreed to build two electric cars at German sites, one in Wolfsburg and one in Zwickau. The company, which employs 624,000 people globally, will add as many as 9,000 positions for projects such as electric vehicles and digital features. The state of Lower Saxony, where Volkswagen is based, will become a technology hub for the manufacturer, and many of the 1,000 jobs to be created there will be for software engineers and cloud-technology experts.

The job cuts will come through early retirement and not replacing workers that leave. The savings comprise 3 billion euros at its German factories and another 700 million euros abroad. Argentina and Brazil will be hit hardest by the staff reduction outside Germany, with Volkswagen’s personnel chief Karlheinz Blessing describing the Brazil cuts as “brutal.”

Weighed down by unwieldy labor contracts, a bloated lineup of vehicles and a convoluted structure, the VW brand has struggled with weak profitability. In the first nine months, the unit’s operating profit margin narrowed to 1.6 percent from 2.8 percent a year earlier. The goal of the labor agreement is to reach a 4 percent profit margin by 2020.

Source:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-18/vw-said-to-cut-23-000-jobs-save-3-9-billion-with-labor-pact

Categories
AutoGeneral reading

Related By:

  • Xpeng’s NGP User Interviews

    黑人工程师克服挑战直至遇到“干杯和烤鱼” 程雷(Emmanuel)已经来中国5年多了。解决问题,适应环境,他一直乐此不疲。 在此之前,他是某公司的首席信息技术官,喜欢“去做别人都不愿意做的”棘手事情。换工作的时候,华为和IBM都找到了他。但是,程雷想要尝试一个更有开创性的领域,所以他选择了前者。 他说,自己骨子里就喜欢挑战,喜欢逆袭的感觉。来自加纳的程雷,正是依靠着新兴科技适应了中国的一切。 作为一名来自加纳的工程师,程雷觉得,人们经常会因为他是黑人而有误解。有一次他去试驾,销售员一来就给他找说唱嘻哈音乐,令他哭笑不得,“他觉得我会喜欢吧”。 语言不通,程雷却靠着百度翻译在中国生活了那么多年。他经常说,挑战促使他往前走,“正是因为这一切,事情才有趣”。 他一直就是这样,灵活适应着周遭的一切。闲暇时候,他会去游泳、骑车、做设计,弹首曲子或者下个厨房,还会去旅… Read more at: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/FXRa0a5YtHxEZUOeN7tyLA...
  • Navigation Guided Pilot (NGP) – An Xpeng Highway Self-drive Capability

    XPeng Motors laid out the company’s roadmap for fully autonomous driving implementation on its Tech Day recently. The XPeng’s ADAS system, called XPILOT, is currently on SAE 2.5, which...
  • Xpeng Motors presents autonomous driving architecture & roadmap at NVIDIA GTC China 2019

    XPILOT has already been through two generations of upgrades, and XPILOT 3.0’s implementation on the P7 will enable L3 functions, including autonomous driving on highways, full-proprietary synergetic sensor capability...
  • Xiaopeng’s Achilles Heel?

    Had lots of fun with Sixie, one of the flagship store sales guides at Xiaopeng’s show room as he arranged test of the different models and variants of the...