Frankfurt (Germany) (AFP) – German car giant Volkswagen said Thursday that management and unions had agreed to cut a total of 100,000 jobs by the end of the decade, the biggest-ever restructuring in the global auto industry.
The company said it had approved a plan involving the reduction of around 50,000 jobs, on top of another 50,000 already agreed.
"It is essential to systematically align workforce levels with economic realities," said the 10-brand group, which apart from its namesake also includes brands such as Audi and Porsche.
Hit by US tariffs, patchy demand for electric cars and above all fierce competition in and from China, Europe's largest carmaker is in trouble.
The total 100,000 cuts will be the largest restructuring ever carried out in the global automotive industry, amounting to about 15 percent of the carmaker's staff worldwide.
It eclipses the 50,000 job cuts General Motors made after it declared bankruptcy in 2009.
Volkswagen further said both management and unions agreed that the long-term future of four German plants -- in Hannover, Emden, Zwickau and Neckarsulm -- could not be guaranteed, while adding that alternative uses for the plants were being looked at.
The plants closing would mark the first time Volkswagen had shuttered full-scale factories in its home country.
"If this plant really were shut down, you could put a big black spot on the map," Martin Lehmann, who has worked at the Zwickau facility since 2012, told AFP.
"The plant and the jobs outside it, our suppliers, they're the motor of the entire region."
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