Union reaches agreement with Volkswagen to avoid plant closures

After more than 70 hours of marathon negotiations, the IG Metall trade union has reached a wage agreement with the management of car manufacturer Voklwagen and will avoid plant closures.

In a press release, the union wrote that the agreement would enable sustainable investment in the future of the car manufacturer and at the same time create prospects for the workforce and their families.

The most important points of the agreement are that plant closures have been averted, as have compulsory redundancies and cuts to monthly salaries.

Compulsory redundancies have been ruled out until the end of 2030.

IG Metall was also able to ensure that the regional collective agreement for the metal and electrical industry is not decoupled from the company. The collective agreement reached there in November 2024, an increase of a good 5 per cent for employees, will initially be suspended at Volkswagen. The additional bonus will be used until 2030 to partially finance instruments for dealing with staff surpluses without compulsory redundancies, which can be used, for example, to flexibly reduce working hours with partial pay compensation and to finance extended partial retirement programmes.

The parties to the collective agreement also agreed to revise the pay system, which is now decades old.

Our journalists are working on this story and it will be updated in due course.