Volkswagen presented a proposal to cut up to 100,000 jobs and close four German factories to its supervisory board on Thursday, prompting IG Metall—the powerful metalworkers' union—to organize demonstrations at 18 sites across the country. The protests ran from 11:20am to 2pm at plants operated by Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, and the truck and bus maker Man.

Chief Executive Oliver Blume's plan targets factories in Hanover, Emden, Zwickau, and Audi's Neckarsulm site. Volkswagen attributes roughly 50,000 of the planned job losses directly to those four closures. When combined with 50,000 reductions already agreed across the wider Volkswagen group, the total headcount reduction under discussion could reach 150,000 positions Reuters. Volkswagen currently employs more than 650,000 people across brands including Audi, Bentley, Skoda, Seat, and Cupra.

IG Metall chair Christiane Benner used the demonstrations to argue that management, not workers, bears responsibility for the company's troubles. "Blume cannot pass the buck for failures of recent years on to the workforce," she told crowds The Guardian.

What makes this dispute exceptional is German labor law. The Volkswagen Act—a 1960s statute originally designed to protect the company from hostile takeovers—requires a two-thirds supervisory board majority to approve plant closures at certain protected facilities. That threshold effectively blocks closure of Act-protected sites without union approval.

The math tilts sharply in labor's favor. Volkswagen's supervisory board has 20 seats, nominally split evenly between shareholder and labor representatives. As of Thursday, only 19 seats were filled, leaving shareholder representatives with nine votes against labor's ten The Guardian. Labor representatives hold an outright majority on the board before the two-thirds threshold for closures is even considered.

That arithmetic explains why Hanover and Emden—both covered by the Volkswagen Act—are essentially unreachable through the board without the union's agreement. Zwickau and Neckarsulm fall outside the Act's protections, so their closure requires no supervisory board approval. This split creates two different tracks within Blume's plan: two plants management can close unilaterally, and two it cannot touch without labor's consent.

VW is also weighing whether to separate its core brand division, components business, and technology operations from the rest of the conglomerate. The company has not detailed timing or structure for any such restructuring.

The dispute did not arrive suddenly. Reuters first reported on June 26 that Volkswagen was considering shutting four German factories and cutting up to 100,000 jobs. The Guardian's coverage of the transformation plan predated Thursday's formal presentation by nearly two weeks Reuters. These leaks gave unions weeks to mobilize before the board vote. In May, IG Metall had already staged a protest at VW-backed engineering firm IAV over separate plans to cut 1,400 jobs, a sign of the union's organizational reach.

Unions argue that Blume's proposal breaks faith with a 2024 agreement between Volkswagen and its workers that explicitly ruled out plant closures in Germany France24. Management's proposal to close at least two sites runs counter to that deal reached less than two years earlier. Volkswagen frames the plan as necessary to restore competitiveness, but unions view it as evidence of bad-faith negotiation.

Germany's auto trade body, the VDA, warned on July 8 of potential employment collapse across the wider sector. The stakes extend beyond Volkswagen's own workforce into the supplier base that depends on it. Supervisory board chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch, who addressed the annual general meeting on June 11, has staked his credibility on guiding the group through what Blume calls a necessary transformation.

The structural dynamics matter as much as the politics here. German codetermination law—which gives workers formal representation in corporate decision-making—combines with the Volkswagen Act's supermajority requirement to make labor's cooperation structurally essential, not merely preferable. Blume's team appears to have designed its plan around that constraint: targeting Zwickau and Neckarsulm because they fall outside labor's blocking power, while leaving Hanover and Emden as negotiating leverage. Whether this produces genuine compromise or prolonged gridlock may depend less on Thursday's demonstrations than on which shareholder representatives fill the board's vacant twentieth seat.