Volkswagen’s supervisory board approved a restructuring on Thursday that calls for 50,000 additional job cuts by 2030, a vehicle lineup shrunk by as much as half by 2035, and a review that could see four German factories closed or repurposed after 2031.
The vote in Wolfsburg was unanimous and came a day ahead of schedule.
It doubles the workforce reductions agreed across the group’s brands since late 2024, taking the cumulative total toward 100,000, and gives chief executive Oliver Blume the broadest mandate he has held to remake Europe’s largest carmaker.
The new cuts represent about 8% of the group’s global workforce at the end of last year. About half of them will fall at German sites.
The Plants
Four factories — Emden, Zwickau, Hanover and Neckarsulm — have been identified as sites for which the company cannot currently demonstrate a competitive use case. Together they employ more than 45,000 people.
Under the plan each has until June 2027 to secure an alternative production concept. Failing that, closure or major structural reallocation becomes possible after 2031.
All four carry electric vehicle programmes.
Zwickau was converted entirely to electric production in 2020 and builds the ID.3 and ID.4; Emden was converted to build the ID.4 and ID.7; Hanover builds the ID.Buzz alongside the combustion Multivan; and Neckarsulm, an Audi plant, builds the e-tron GT and A6 e-tron alongside the A6 and A8.
That the four sites the group cannot find a competitive use for are also four of its electric vehicle plants is the clearest signal in the package that European electric volumes have not filled the capacity built for them.
What Labour Got
Half the seats on Volkswagen’s supervisory board belong to labour representatives, and their agreement was the price of the vote.
IG Metall chief Christiane Benner and works council head Daniela Cavallo said in a joint statement that the compromise had prevented a dangerous escalation, and stressed that no plant closure had been agreed and that a proposed separation of the passenger-car and components businesses was off the table.
“The work is only just beginning,” they said of the restructuring. “What we will continue never to accept, however, is the burden being placed one-sidedly on employees.”
That framing preserves the December 2024 settlement, under which Volkswagen committed to about 35,000 German job reductions by 2030 through attrition and early retirement rather than dismissals, with job security guaranteed through the end of the decade and no plant closures.
Thursday’s plan adds a second, larger tranche on top while leaving the guarantee formally in place — and leaving the four plants’ fate to a deadline two years out.
The Case Blume Made
Blume told the board the company’s position was more than critical, and warned that even 50,000 further cuts might prove insufficient to secure long-term competitiveness.
In an internal memo and an intranet interview with staff, he cited a cost disadvantage of about 20% against rivals, declining sales in China, high German costs, underused factories, competition from Chinese electric vehicle makers and US tariffs.
The plan ties the cuts to a target of lifting the group’s operating return from around 4% to 9% by 2030, backed by an investment package running from 2027 to 2031 that the company describes as a three-figure billion-euro sum.
The Porsche and Piëch families, who control a majority of voting rights through Porsche SE, have pressed for faster action as returns and dividend flows have come under pressure.
How It Got Here
Volkswagen first told staff in September 2024 that it was considering closing German factories for the first time in its history.
The works council responded that it would resist “bitterly,” and nearly 100,000 employees staged walkouts that autumn against proposals that included a 10% pay cut and at least three plant closures.
The December 2024 agreement averted closures in exchange for the 35,000-job reduction. In January this year, according to Manager Magazin and Reuters, Blume and chief financial officer Arno Antlitz presented a groupwide programme to cut costs by about 20% by the end of 2028, described to executives as massive and exempting no brand.
Thursday’s vote is the point at which that programme acquired a headcount number, a plant list and a deadline.
