Blume tells Wolfsburg that Germany must take half the next wave of VW cuts

Volkswagen chief executive Oliver Blume told workers at Wolfsburg on Tuesday that roughly half of the group's next round of job cuts would have to fall in Germany. He called the often-cited extra 50,000 global reductions a theoretical calculation rather than a fixed target. Fixed costs, he said, run 30 percent higher than at competitors. More than 40 percent of the group's 667,000 people work in Germany. The Wolfsburg plant alone employs about 70,000.

The speech landed on a plan that has been leaking since June. Sources told Reuters then that Blume wanted to double previously announced cuts toward 100,000 jobs, shut factories at Hanover, Emden and Zwickau and Audi's Neckarsulm site, and cut the five-year investment budget by about 15 percent to just over €130 billion. Closing those four plants would put more than 45,000 jobs at risk on top of 50,000 already scheduled. First-quarter operating profit fell 14.3 percent to €2.46 billion. Full-year 2025 operating profit was €8.9 billion, down 53 percent from 2024.

Daniela Cavallo, chair of the group works council, said this week that trust in the executive board, and in Blume, was "damaged. Not yet beyond repair." An internal survey had described communication about the firm's future as disastrous. IG Metall and Lower Saxony, which holds a 20 percent voting stake and sits on the supervisory board, have said they will fight plant closures. Premier Olaf Lies called worker influence "an integral part of Volkswagen's success story."

The VW law is the other factory

Management has discussed carving the passenger-car brand into a separate entity. That structure is one way around the VW law, which limits how the core company can close German plants. The union calls a carve-out an attack on that law. Blume described the period as "more than critical." The fight is now public on the hall floor in Wolfsburg, which is still the largest single car plant in the world.