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-- OriginalOwner_ [tinyurl.com] writes:

from the capitalism:-it's-a-race-to-the-bottom-for-workers dept.

The World Socialist Web Site reports [wsws.org]

The management of Volkswagen in Germany, [Europe's largest automaker, with around 620,000 employees,] has taken a hard-line stance in a dispute with two suppliers and accepted a partial halt in [vehicle] production.

[...]Almost 30,000 workers face the threat of forced time off or reduced hours. [...] The company has applied for reduced working hours at the federal labour agency, which means employees will receive reduced-hours pay, meaning significant wage reductions.

[...]Suppliers ES Automobilguss and Car Trim allege VW has forced them to halt deliveries by ending a development cooperation programme worth half a billion euros without notice or cause. Both firms are demanding VW pay €58 million in compensation. They describe the crisis at VW as self-made. "VW was offloading its own problems onto the supply industry" and was clearly exploiting "its dominant market position against suppliers", they claimed. An employee meeting took place at ES on [August 22].

ES specialises in transmissions, while Car Trim focuses on internal fittings like car seats.

[...]The conflict between VW and Prevent [Group, which overarches the two suppliers and others,] is the outcome of the years-long process of cutting costs by shifting production from the major automakers to suppliers. Much of production has been outsourced to Eastern Europe, where wages are many times lower than those in Germany.

[...]Automakers like VW use their buying power to force down prices. The suppliers pass on this pressure to their own suppliers as well as to workers.

[...]The extortion of suppliers has a long history at VW. As early as 1993, the board of directors, with the support of the IG Metall union and works council, secured the services of the notorious "cost killer" Jose Ignacio Lopez from General Motors, who specialised in squeezing suppliers to the last penny. Not for nothing was Lopez known in the auto industry as the "strangler from Wolfsburg". Those who suffered most were the workers at the affected companies. But the trade union representatives, then as now, were bothered little by this.

The renewed intensification of pressure on the supply industry is part of a general attack on jobs, wages and working conditions at company plants and suppliers. This is, among other things, a result of the emissions scandal [wsws.org].

Previous: Volkswagen Sets Aside 6.5 Billion Euros for Fines and Recalls [soylentnews.org]
Activist-Comedian Interrupts VW Exec's Geneva Presentation to Install "Cheat Box" [soylentnews.org]

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