MANAGEMENT & STRATEGY

Volkswagen's 100,000 Job Cuts: The Negotiation Structure That Moved the Supervisory Board and Unions

On September 3, Volkswagen's Supervisory Board unanimously approved the 'Future Plan 2030,' which entails the restructuring of approximately 50,000 additional positions, bringing the total adjustment scale to roughly 100,000 when combined with existing programs. Official announcements frame this not as confirmed dismissals, but as required workforce restructuring under planning assumptions, with matters requiring labor-management agreement moving to subsequent brand- and subsidiary-level negotiations. The same proposal had been rejected on July 9 within a governance structure heavily influenced by employee representatives and the state of Lower Saxony. The final plan omitted provisions for spinning off the passenger car and components business into separate legal entities, while the issue of four plants was deferred as a task until the end of June 2027. The core of the restructuring lies not in the headcounts, but in governance techniques: the design of a decision-making map incorporating authority and prior agreements, mediation channels, and the time-bound reconfiguration of contentious issues.