By Martin Suchanek

The champagne corks are popping on the VW Executive Board. At the Supervisory Board meeting on 3 September, the management, the bosses’ representatives, the SPD-led state of Lower Saxony, works councils and trade unions unanimously (!) agreed on a restructuring plan that is virtually unprecedented:

• In Germany, 50,000 of the 284,032 jobs (figure as at 31 December 2025, VW Annual Report 2025) are to be cut – in a ‘socially responsible’ manner, of course. 15,000 of these will be at the Audi and Porsche brands. Globally, the decision has been taken to cut a further 50,000 jobs – without any social safety nets, of course. In total, therefore, 100,000 workers out of over 602,659 employees worldwide at the end of 2025 (figure excluding 26,000 employees in Chinese joint ventures) will be made redundant.
• Four sites in Germany – Emden, Hanover, Zwickau and Neckarsulm – are set to close after 2031, even though the prospect of a switch to other products or sales – for example, a switch to defence production as at VW Osnabrück – has been held out.

The VW Executive Board has thus prevailed on all key points. On the German stock exchange, the DAX 40, VW’s share price rose on the morning of 4 September by more than six per cent at the start of trading – a rise not seen for a long time – whilst Porsche’s rose by three per cent. Even if the boom on the stock market is likely to be short-lived, the mainstream media of German capital are also expressing optimism. At last, according to the FAZ, “specific profit and cost-saving targets have been set out, along with a number of areas for action; from the planned halving of the model range to the reorientation of the North American and Chinese businesses”. However, the newspaper goes on to say, the decision must now be implemented. The works council and IG Metall must not now water down the decision, which they supported, through ‘petty’ negotiations.

Works council and IG Metall capitulate

It is clear to see. The bourgeoisie is an ungrateful class. Without the consent of the works council, IG Metall and the state of Lower Saxony—which holds a 20 per cent stake in VW—the mass redundancy programme would never have secured a majority. Instead, they reached an agreement with CEO Blume behind closed doors.

To put it plainly: the works council and IG Metall (as well as the SPD-led state of Lower Saxony) have capitulated. They have yielded to the Executive Board on every point. Now the bourgeois commentators are pressing home their point: the declaration of capitulation must be implemented consistently.

But why did they agree to it in the first place? In a joint statement, Christiane Benner, First Chair of IG Metall, and Daniela Cavallo, Chair of the General and Group Works Council of Volkswagen AG, justify their agreement as follows:

“In this situation, the employees’ representatives, together with the state of Lower Saxony, have once again taken responsibility, prevented a dangerous escalation of the conflict and paved the way for viable solutions. To this end, all parties have made concessions.

“A spin-off of the core Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand and the VW components division is off the table, meaning the attack on the co-determination structures has been successfully fended off. No plant has been abandoned and, contrary to several media reports, no plant closure has been finalised.”

Once again, the trade union and works council bureaucracy are patting themselves on the back. Whilst management ‘escalates’ the situation and thereby ‘unsettles’ the workforce, the bureaucracy takes ‘responsibility’ – by stabbing the workers in the back and agreeing to the Executive Board’s plan. What has this actually prevented?

Firstly, it has pre-empted such a resolution being tabled at the shareholders’ meeting, where the bureaucracy of the trade unions and works councils has no say. In the end, it is the shareholders’ meeting – and not the Supervisory Board, which is composed of social partners – that now effectively has the final say at Volkswagen. Even if it did not have to be summoned, the trade union and works councils representatives on the Supervisory Board subordinated to the shareholders. The power of the Supervisory Board, institution of social partnership and co-determination, has long since been undermined by that of the financial markets themselves. Yet neither IG Metall nor the works council nor the SPD state government is willing to face up to this reality. It is, however, indirectly acknowledged by their voting in the interests of the shareholders and against those of the workers – whilst also pretending to hold the reins of action in their own hands.

Secondly, however, one thing becomes clear once again. The trade union representatives and works council members see themselves as ‘better’, more responsible, representatives of the long-term interests of ‘their’ company. The bureaucrats acknowledge that staff cuts, productivity increases and ‘tough measures’ are necessary. They just argue that these must not be ‘one-sided’. After all, they too share the goal that VW must remain at the forefront of the car industry, rather than some foreign competitor. To achieve this, however, according to Benner and Cavallo, the Executive Board must do its ‘homework’ and finally ‘get the necessary investments off the ground, drive innovation forward and secure long-term employment’.

What a mockery! Having just agreed to the redundancy of 100,000 workers, they are pretending they stand for job security. They do not. This becomes most starkly apparent when it comes to the jobs of the 50,000 workers who are not employed at German sites. For Cavallo, the chair of the group works council, these workers are, at best, a footnote. When it comes to preserving sites, the focus is really only on those in Germany.

It is important to understand that Cavallo and Benner are not simply bad trade unionists. The problem runs deeper. Like the entire leadership of the industrial trade unions in Germany and the heads of all works councils in the major corporations, they see themselves as better representatives of the overall interests of ‘their’ corporation – and they act accordingly. They therefore want to prevent an escalation with the Executive Board and a fight against all redundancies at almost any cost.

Surrender is not the only option

But at VW, everything is at stake. Anyone who gets caught up in the machinery of class collaboration ends up in complete surrender. The supervisory board’s decision thus represents a severe blow to all VW workers and to the entire working class in Germany and across the whole group.

Capitulation is anything but the only option. VW workers are among the best-organised in the entire working class. In Germany, over 90 per cent of the VW Group’s workforce are members of IG Metall. In works council elections, the union wins between 83 and 85 per cent of the seats.

IG Metall is therefore a force to be reckoned with within the VW Group (and across the entire German metal and electrical industry). Yet it fails to wield this power effectively, contenting itself at best with symbolic, one-day actions such as the ‘Automotive Industry Day of Action’ planned for 21 September. It has no plan of action for this. Instead, it repeats like a mantra that the responsible management teams must do their ‘homework’, and apart, from that, it gets together with group CEOs and business associations to write letters of appeal to the federal government, urging it to provide more subsidies to big industry.

The IG Metall leadership even hopes that state support from the government will bring back the ‘good old days’, when social partnership and class collaboration at Volkswagen (and other car manufacturers) were so successful. However, it refuses even to consider the reasons behind the German car industry’s success on the world market. After all, growing turnover and profits did not simply fall from the sky; they were themselves the result of high rates of exploitation, steadily rising productivity and extra profits derived from global exploitation. This enabled many competitors to be defeated. For decades, the policy of class collaboration also ensured the competitiveness of German industry through productivity agreements. But these ‘good old days’ will not return; they are irretrievably over.

Their impact on the consciousness of the working class, however, is not; rather, it weighs upon it like a nightmare. For years, jobs seemed relatively secure, and wages remain above average to this day. For instance, production workers at VW Wolfsburg earn an around 56,000 euros gross per year. The average gross annual earnings of all employees – including engineers, research and highly qualified parts of production – at German car manufacturers stand even at 93,000 euros.

This situation also forms the social basis for the ideology of social partnership amongst the workforce, the majority of whom belong to the labour aristocracy. Added to this is the fact that, for decades, they have been brought up in the spirit of precisely this class collaboration, which tied their own future to the success of ‘their’ company.

The last few years, with an ever-increasing number of turnaround and restructuring programmes, have undermined confidence in ‘social partnership’ amongst many workers. The current wave of redundancies is further exacerbating this. This was also evident at the works meetings held over the past few weeks. The workers are outraged and angry at the management, but they are often also desperate and at a loss. They do not know what the future holds and are somehow still hoping for a future within the group. The works councils and trade union bureaucrats are attempting to capitalise on this contradictory mood by selling even the most shabby sell-off – a capitulation to management – to the workers as a ‘compromise’ that, in line with the motto ‘Hope dies last’, somehow offers a way forward.

In the short term, therefore, it may well be that the anger directed at the board is channelled into ‘peaceful’ channels by the works councils and IG Metall. But the problem with the bureaucracy is also clear: apart from whitewashing the situation, it has nothing to offer. Its policies will not save a single site; rather, it is helping to manage the largest wave of redundancies in VW’s history.

Class struggle opposition is necessary

Yet the implementation of this capitulation will not happen overnight, it will take place over months, even years. This means that the struggle against the redundancies and closures is not over, even if the group’s management has secured a major victory.

Within the VW Group (and in other car manufacturers too), it is not just anger and outrage mixed with despair and a vague hope that things will somehow carry on that are developing. An opposition is also beginning to take shape amongst left-wing, militant trade unionists, shop stewards and individual works council members. For example, IG Metall shop stewards at Daimler in Untertürkheim have organised workplace protests during working hours and openly criticised the IGM executive board for its policy of cooperation with business associations.

This is a sign of things to come. Overall, the opposition within the trade unions and workplaces is currently weak, poorly organised and fragmented. This is also due to the role of the bureaucratic apparatus, which has a long history of repression against oppositional trade union groups (including cooperation with management against these very groups).

However, there is no alternative to building an organised, class-struggle-oriented opposition to the bureaucracy at VW and in other corporations. The current escalation of the situation makes this urgently necessary – and enables us to organise workers who have not previously been active.

It is therefore essential that these movements make themselves as visible as possible on 21 September and during the DGB days of action against social cuts. A coordination meeting for trade union opposition is planned for 16–17 October in Kassel.

A key strategy is to bring this debate into Die Linke. Die Linke, too, could establish itself in this conflict in very practical terms as an ‘organising class-based party’ within the working class, but it must decide whether it wishes to do so as the left wing of the bureaucracy or as the voice of the rank and file.

Symbolic actions and one-day protests will not be enough to prevent the mass redundancies at VW. What is needed is a battle plan, indefinite strikes and workplace occupations against all redundancies and closures, combined with the struggle for the expropriation without compensation of VW (and all other corporations that are putting tens of thousands out of work) under workers’ control.

However, in order to develop and enforce a plan of action within the trade unions, it is also necessary to bring together these various opposition initiatives: a nationwide, democratic action conference of all opposition groups within the trade unions, including the trade union structures of the Left Party. What is needed is an organised political alternative to the ‘social partnership’ and the bureaucracy’s class collaboration.