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VW boss Diess: roll backwards
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Christophe Gateau / DPA
After clear criticism from the works council, Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess will take part in the works meeting in Wolfsburg at the beginning of November.
A trip to the USA that was actually planned for next week has been canceled, as a company spokesman confirmed.
CEO Diess will be in Wolfsburg on November 4th and answer questions from employees, said the company spokesman.
A dialogue event planned for Thursday was canceled at short notice.
According to insiders, the interest in it should have been limited anyway.
Previously, the new chairman of the works council, Daniela Cavallo, had clearly criticized the CEO's absence and his own planned event.
"Herbert Diess prefers investors on Wall Street to its own workforce," wrote Cavallo in a statement on Tuesday evening.
This behavior is unprecedented in the history of the group and shows that Diess has neither empathy nor feeling for the situation of the workforce even in this crisis.
“This provocation shows us that Dr.
Diess still has no interest in constructive cooperation. "
Instead, the board of directors pushes a dialogue event "according to its own script" into its calendar.
Cavallo had also asked Diess to send the CFO Arno Antlitz to the investors in the USA if necessary and to answer questions from the workforce.
The fact that Diess has now canceled his travel plans is received with goodwill by employee representatives, but also with a pinch of ridicule: It is very welcome that the CEO has now correctly adjusted his compass for the priorities in his own appointment calendar, it is said.
But there could be no question of a "north" by the employee representatives.
Rather, Herbert Diess apparently noticed his mistake himself and has now corrected it.
That is exemplary and only corresponds to the values of the group.
The works council in Wolfsburg is alarmed because the VW main plant is underutilized.
There could be as little production here in 2021 as it was last in the late 1950s.
The workforce representatives have long been asking for another electric model in addition to the “Trinity” project, which is to come from 2026 - later than initially planned.
mic / sh / dpa-afx