Volkswagen’s Works Meeting Blitz Begins as a Chinese Tariff Play Emerges to Save Zwickau

Volkswagen is heading into a pivotal nine-day stretch of extraordinary works meetings starting August 25, with CEO Oliver Blume facing workers in Wolfsburg, Emden, Zwickau and Hannover. The confrontations come as the carmaker scrambles to map out cost cuts that could reshape its German factory network — and as a novel idea from Saxony’s economy minister raises the possibility of using higher EU tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to lure a Chinese joint-venture partner to the struggling Zwickau plant.

The works council called the meetings after Blume let its deadline for a personal appearance expire. Blume will be joined by brand chief Thomas Schäfer in Wolfsburg, Emden and Zwickau. Additional gatherings are planned in Braunschweig, Salzgitter, Dresden, Chemnitz and Kassel-Baunatal. The council has warned that up to 140,000 positions across the group could be at risk — a figure that includes the 50,000 job reductions already scheduled through 2030. Blume himself has floated the possibility of another 50,000 global cuts under a worst-case scenario.

Four German sites — Emden, Hannover, Zwickau and Neckarsulm — face the bleakest outlook, with the supervisory board warning that their utilisation rates may not become competitive again until the 2030s. The board has been deliberating savings measures since mid-July and will hold another session on September 4. Blume insists he wants to avoid outright plant closures and points to a one-fifth reduction in factory costs already achieved for 2025, though the model range is set to shrink by roughly half to tackle overcapacity.

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In a potential lifeline for Zwickau, Saxony’s SPD economy minister Dirk Panter has proposed doubling EU import duties on Chinese-made electric vehicles. The EU currently applies levies ranging from 7.8% to 35.3%, depending on the manufacturer. Panter argues that a joint venture in Zwickau could help a Chinese partner bypass those higher tariffs — provided the economics work for both sides. Volkswagen itself is already exploring the possibility of building Chinese models in Europe to boost plant loading. But auto expert Stefan Bratzel has warned that Chinese manufacturers typically prefer cheaper locations in Hungary, Portugal or Turkey, making Germany a harder sell for long-term production contracts.

The personnel turmoil extends beyond the factory floor. Erika Rasch, the Bosch executive tipped as a candidate for Volkswagen's vacant human resources board role, has fallen through over conditions attached to the position — a glaring gap precisely when the company must negotiate the deepest workforce reduction in its modern history.

Investors are watching the clock more than the boardroom. Volkswagen’s preferred shares closed at €73.26 on Friday, leaving the stock 29.66% lower since the start of the year and just 5.87% above its 52-week low of €69.20 hit in early July. The shares have shed 15.56% over the past 30 days alone. Whether Blume can convince workers that his restructuring plan is a survival strategy rather than a threat will become clearer when he steps onto the stages of those nine factory halls. If he cannot, the standoff between management, the works council, the state of Lower Saxony and the Porsche-Piëch families — a tangled governance knot one German newspaper describes as making the group barely governable — could snap.

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