CSP Conlutas Brazil: Workers Protest Layoffs at Volkswagen in Germany: Solidarity!
The demonstrations took place at more than 50 companies in the automotive and auto parts sectors in Bavaria, in the southern part of the country. In Munich, BMW employees also participated in a march.
The struggle waged by the metalworkers comes in response to Volkswagen’s announcement earlier this year that it plans to lay off up to 100,000 workers in Germany over the next 10 years.
The Crisis Is Not the Workers’ Fault
The justification given by company management is the need for restructuring to face competition from Asian automakers—particularly Chinese manufacturers—and to make the transition to electric vehicles.
However, German workers denounce that the company’s plan, in practice, is to shift the cost of a crisis they did not create onto the backs of auto workers, while shareholders continue to rake in millions of euros every year.
“This is an unprecedented attack on industrial workers,” said IG Metall leader Christiane Benner. “It is the employees who are being forced to bear the burden of an industry in crisis. This has to stop.”
In an official statement, IG Metall also explains that the crisis in the German automotive industry is largely self-inflicted, because automakers’ management made a series of wrong decisions.
“Affordable cars were launched too late, and important developments in digitalization and batteries were neglected. Investments in future technologies and production facilities were sidelined,” the statement reads.
Resistance
Faced with this wave of attacks, IG Metall has organized a series of activities over the past few months during the European summer that have served as a call to resistance among workers.
Among the demands brought to the streets are the guarantee of job security through greater investment in production sites rather than short-term cost-cutting measures.
In addition, German workers reject the proposal for a 40-hour workweek and advocate for maintaining the 35-hour workweek agreed upon in the collective bargaining agreement. They demand that the German government reduce electricity costs
Full Support
Under capitalism, the bosses’ recipe for solving their crises is always the same: stripping the working class of its rights and wages. That is why days of struggle and general strikes are necessary to stop these attacks.
In Germany, Brazil, and around the world, workers must fight together. Full solidarity with our German comrades. CSP-Conlutas and ICOG express their support for the struggle of German workers.
Translated by deepL.com
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