Germany’s government was considering ways to support Volkswagen, German economy minister and vice-chancellor Robert Habeck said on Thursday when asked about the threat of job cuts at the country’s largest carmaker.
Volkswagen said this month it needed to cut costs significantly at its namesake brand in Germany, citing high costs, low productivity and fierce competition.
“VW is of central importance to Germany,” Habeck told reporters. The minister will visit a VW plant in the city of Emden on Friday.
Habeck declined to comment on a report in German monthly “manager magazin,” which said that some within the company reckon the group’s German workforce would have to come down by 30,000 over the mid-term, or about 10% of the Volkswagen Group’s total German workforce. It did not cite sources.
That number, which has been frequently cited in the past with regard to potential job reductions at Volkswagen in Germany, “has no basis whatsoever and is simply nonsense”, a spokesman for the carmaker’s works council said.
Management and unions are set to start negotiations next week on replacing long-standing wage agreements that Volkswagen cancelled earlier this month along with threats to close plants in Germany for the first time in history.