With German unemployment at an all-time high, Wolfgang Bernhard's got a tough road ahead of him. Why, one might ask? It seems with all of those unemployed, VW could simply lower its wages and pick up extra capacity in its home country. Win-win, no? Jobs created at home; lower costs for Volkswagen vehicles, thus making them more competitive in a marketplace where they've recently been taking a drubbing. But there's a slight problem for Herren Pieschetsrieder and Bernhard: namely that German politicians, especially those in the state of Niedersachsen (no, not the all little-person Saxon tribute band from Sheboygan, but thanks for asking) has been playing an ultimately derogatory game of CYA for years.
The labor unions, tied in closely with the political parties in Germany, don't want to lose wages and benefits. The government doesn't want to lose the votes of the gainfully employed, and seeing as the company is partially state-owned, with Lower Saxony the corporation's largest shareholder, the bureaucrats are understandably shaken at the prospect of fiddling with the status quo to the tune of cutting 10,000 jobs and moving more production outside the borders of the Vaterland. In the face of that, the dashing 45-year-old ex-Chrysler CEO came up with a pretty righteous statement on the government, though it's one that eerily echoes something that might have been ripped from the soundbite catalogue of the Thousand Year Reich that birthed the company over six decades ago: "We can't be a toy for politicians that play (with) us once in awhile. Governments come and go but we have to be there for the long run."
Can Bernhard turn around VW? [Detroit News]
VW North America Head Steps Down [Internal]