Volkswagen has announced the closure of at least three plants in Germany, the works council of the German automaker has reported, with sources including Bild and die Welt confirming the news. Daniela Cavallo, chairwoman of the Volkswagen Group works council, announced during an information meeting for employees in Wolfsburg that the board of management intends to proceed with the closure of these plants. She also said that none of the current plants are safe and that all sites will be downsized. This scenario worries the council, as tens of thousands of jobs could be at risk. The company recently informed workers about these plans.

Among the plants most at risk is the one in Osnabrueck, which recently lost a major order from Porsche. Volkswagen currently employs around 120,000 people in Germany, with almost half of the hiring concentrated at the headquarters in Wolfsburg. The brand operates ten plants in the country: six are in Lower Saxony, three in Saxony and one in Hesse. Last September, Volkswagen decided to cancel a program dedicated to workplace safety that had been in place for more than three decades.

The IG Metall union reacted strongly to the company’s plans, calling the situation “a deep stab in the heart” of Volkswagen workers and calling the plant closures “unacceptable.” IG Metall warned that there would be repercussions if the company were to go ahead with the plans. Thorsten Gröger, the union’s district manager, said the aggressive decisions of the board could not be tolerated and were a break with the company’s values ​​established over the past decades.

The works council says that significant cuts and closures are planned at at least three sites in Germany. Gröger further stressed that Volkswagen employees deserve concrete answers about the future of the company rather than just empty promises about job security. A new meeting between VW and the union will take place in Wolfsburg on Wednesday to discuss collective bargaining; Gröger warned that if VW were to confirm its negative intentions at this meeting, management would face the consequences of its actions.

According to Cavallo, VW is considering a general reduction of ten percent in the company’s salary scale and does not plan to raise it in the next two years. Wolfgang Buechner, spokesman for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, speaking at a press conference in Berlin on this complex situation, stressed that the difficult period for VW is well known, but also the importance of waiting for official clarifications from the company before taking any definitive position.

Buechner drew attention to the fact that the Chancellor had already clearly expressed in the previous weeks the need for the company’s management to avoid wrong decisions that could fall back on the workers and the crucial importance of maintaining jobs in the current environment.