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Businesses Transportation

Volkswagen Plans 30,000 Job Cuts Worldwide (bbc.com) 82

Posted by msmash from the job-cuts dept.
Volkswagen has announced plans to cut 30,000 jobs worldwide with about 23,000 of the losses borne in Germany. From a report on BBC:VW, still dealing with the aftermath of the emissions-cheating scandal, aims to rejuvenate its core brand, and develop new electric and self-driving cars. VW says it will create 9,000 jobs as part of investments in new products. The cuts should bring annual savings of $3.92bn by 2020. VW and unions have been hammering out a plan to revive its fortunes since June. Volkswagen chief executive, Matthias Mueller, said it was "the biggest modernisation programme in the history of the group's core brand." "The VW brand needs a real shake-up and that is exactly what the future pact has turned out to be," he added. The car giant -- which employs 610,000 people in 31 countries -- wants to increase the brand's profit margin from 2% to 4% and to do this it will need to improve productivity at its German plants by 25%.
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Volkswagen Plans 30,000 Job Cuts Worldwide More

Volkswagen Plans 30,000 Job Cuts Worldwide

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  • is what I'm guessing this is. Notice there's a lot of talk about shaking up the brand and very little about sales figures dropping. Nobody really cared much about this scandal except the shareholders who are gonna see VW's cash reserves (slightly) eaten into.
    • "Volkswagen sales plunge on emissions scandal"

      http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/13/news/companies/volkswagen-sales-emission-scandal/ [cnn.com]
    • Counter point; the U.S. is filled to the brim with nobodies, and we as a group enjoy using breathable air. So what? Try living in Peking, if breathing is a trivial issue. As for VW's stupid dumb ass engineers; well, somebody at the top said, "ya, this work around is OK."
    • You're forgetting the US$14 billion penalty?

  • Employees (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lazarus ( 2879 ) on Friday November 18, 2016 @10:10AM (#53314089) Journal

    It's always the employees (and their families) who end up suffering for poor management decisions.

    Cheat. Get Caught. Pay fines. Lay off Employees.

    • I'm sure the top managers have lost a few million off their annual bonus, and their shares have dropped precipitously too.

      Still, you can't help but wonder if whichever manager(s) were responsible for this feel any remorse towards those losing their jobs.

      • I would more than happily accept the millions that they still get as regular salary without bonus.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by lgw ( 121541 )

          "Managers" don't get millions in salary anywhere. The word you want is "executives", and even then it's very rare for anyone to have more than a million in salary. Heck, it's very rare for anyone beyond the CEO and CFO to make more than a million in total comp.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by hey! ( 33014 )

            Except that bonuses are paid out even when the CEO presides over a disaster. Martin Winterkorn got 6.5 million dollars in performance bonuses for his last year, even though VW stock went from $253/share to $92. That's on top of a "base" salary of $1.5 million.

            Citigroup paid out $5.3 billion in "performance bonuses" in 2008, the same year the federal government had to bail them out because the company at $39 billion dollars in sub-prime mortgage backed securities that nobody knew the exact value of, and the

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by lgw ( 121541 )

              "Performance bonus" is nominally a different thing than "salary", though of course both get paid no matter what. Winterkorn is an executive, not a manager. An since he was chairman of the board and thus could set his own compensation, it's hardly surprising he decided he was worth that much even as a failure.

              Citigroup paid out $5.3 billion in "performance bonuses" in 2008, the same year the federal government had to bail them out because the company at $39 billion dollars in sub-prime mortgage backed securities

              The sub-prime bailout were nothing but handing taxpayer money to banking executives. They had no other purpose, and achieved no other goal.

              The idea that "performance bonuses" have anything to do with accountability for results is ludicrous. They have everything to do with that these people are powerful enough to write the rules for themselves.

              Well, yeah, so what kind of idiot would own stock in a finan

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by hey! ( 33014 )

                Well, it's one of a number of stocks I own, and has actually done pretty well, returning to its pre-crisis in about a year. So from a financial standpoint it isn't really so idiotic to hold this one stock in my portfolio.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by lgw ( 121541 )

                  I bought a lottery scratch-off ticket, and won more than it costs, so from a financial standpoint is was a good bet?

                  I guess you could argue that the government is so corrupt that financials will keep their gains, but have their losses shielded by the taxpayer, and so they're a good bet on that basis - but only for too big to fail banks, and only if they don't decide to screw the stockholders along with the taxpayers next time.

    • You don't need fines for that. Lots of managers can make employees suffer by means of poor decisions even when no fines are involved.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Have you read, you know, the actual article? Plan developed with, and agreed by, the labour union. No force lay-offs, but rather voluntary early retirement.

      There's more positive in this whole story than negative, yet people must still rant about it.

    • It would be interesting to see how VW treats its fellow German employees.

      • What's that "fellow" you're talking about? Corporations know no nationalities, unless of course certain nations offer them kickbacks.

    • You forgot the last step: Cut their taxes because businesses pay too much.

    • It's always the employees (and their families) who end up suffering for poor management decisions.

      A company doesn't get into this scenario with poor decisions. It gets into this scenario through a bad corporate culture. Employees are a part of that culture.

  • New workers (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Its a good thing that Germany recently got a whole bunch of educated, civil, and German speaking refugees.

    • If you are referring to the Syrians, what exactly in the news suggests that even a good percentage of them are German speaking? German is not one of the common languages in Syria - French is. If you are not referring to the Syrians, who are you referring to?

  • Overpriced cars w/ big overheads (Score:3)

    by unixisc ( 2429386 ) on Friday November 18, 2016 @10:24AM (#53314213)

    I used to own a Passat years ago. Easily the worst car I ever owned, but it was the wife's pick. Thing about it was that all repairs were expensive, thanks to VW's practice of replacing entire modules if there was just a small thing wrong. Like if your indicator LED on your dashboard stopped working, the entire front panel needed to be replaced.

    It would be one thing to have that on Mercs, Beamers or Porsches, but I just couldn't justify that on a VW

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yeah - stupid women

    • My Passat was fun to drive, but only on the days when the car actually worked. Unfortunately, there were not enough of those days. Over the course of six months, I spent about $3600 at the dealership on a wide variety of problems. Each time, I thought the car would be OK for a while. And it was -- for about a month. After a while, I realized I was spending about $600/month to drive a 5-year old car. It would be cheaper to buy a new car whose payments are less than $600/month and drive that instead. So

      • Re:I had a Passat as well; same problem (Score:4, Insightful)

        by HornWumpus ( 783565 ) on Friday November 18, 2016 @12:43PM (#53315631)

        I don't care what brand of car you own (exception for exotics needing factory service to retain value).

        Never take a car to a dealership for non-warranty work. Never.

        WTF were you thinking?

        If you know nothing about cars, have a friend that does, find you a reasonably honest shop. You'll note that she/he won't even consider the 'stealerships'. Many dealership mechanics are honest, but the whole place _isn't_. It's not (necessarily) the dealership mechanic stealing from you, it's everybody else there...$100+ labor rate for recent 'wyotech' grads...'retail' parts pricing...you literally can't do worse.

        • you literally can't do worse

          Well.... you could.... If you don't fix your car then you have a rather large, relatively expensive and utterly worthless piece of junk sitting in your parking space.

    • Way to throw your wife under the (VW) bus....

  • Fake number (Score:3)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Friday November 18, 2016 @10:25AM (#53314221)

    The company reports 30,000 upcoming, but it'll be much more in the end when the story is forgotten and nobody's watching. The company has implemented a cheating device that reports fake numbers when the press and incestors are watching: they call it the PR Department...

    • and incestors are watching

      Bunch of motherf****rs

    • The company reports 30,000 upcoming, but it'll be much more in the end when the story is forgotten and nobody's watching. The company has implemented a cheating device that reports fake numbers when the press and incestors are watching: they call it the PR Department...

      That is the most accurate description of C-level management I have ever seen. Well done.

    • The company reports 30,000 upcoming, but it'll be much more in the end when the story is forgotten and nobody's watching.

      Doubt it. That is the opposite of what usually happens. Normally they announce big, looks good for share holders and people watching and then don't actually lay as many people off.

      I worked for a company which recently announced 5000 job cuts. When I asked management about it the answer was, yes, but you've known about this for a long time. We've just re-announced and massaged a number that we have been working with for over a year already.

    • Muvh to do about a silly typo. Vompounded by a lavk of simple proofreading before sending. (v=c) Has led this thread to risk potential accusations of prejudice on several levels, even though locker room humor is apparently back in vogue in the USA.

  • Of course, we first have to lay off 23.000, and it goes without saying that those 9.000 will be hired via temp agencies and only if you offer us some kickbacks, else we're going to build those cars in Romania.

  • Look, we have three things to consider, that impact VW.

    One, emissions. Verify, don't trust. Random driving by humans in all terrain, with stops and in-city and country separate. Is it as easy as doing in a building? No. But they will game the system. So put a diaper gas bag on that baby.

    Two, electric cars. Battery life in real world applications with different usage in desert, mountains, city, and moderate temp. Again, field tests, not just in buildings.

    Three, for the most part, trust the stats for electr

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