Thousands of workers at nine Volkswagen factories across Germany, including its EV-only factory, are going on strike this morning, bringing assembly lines to a grinding halt in the battle over the slashed pay, lost jobs, and the automaker’s future.

The walkouts, scheduled Monday morning, are planned to last several hours and serve as a warning of possible 24-hour strikes on the horizon, or even more drastic measures going forward, Reuters reports. The IG Metall union, which represents 120,000 Volkswagen workers, has said it will take the fight all the way if it has to.  

“If necessary, this will become the toughest wage dispute Volkswagen has ever seen,” IG Metall’s chief negotiator Thorsten Groeger said in a statement. “How long and intense this dispute will be is Volkswagen’s responsibility at the negotiating table.”

He added: “Volkswagen has set our collective bargaining agreements on fire, and instead of extinguishing this fire during three rounds of negotiations, the management board keeps throwing open barrels of gasoline onto it.”

The strike comes after weeks of collective bargaining negotiations in which the Volkswagen didn’t back down from its plan to potentially slash thousands of jobs and close factories in Germany – a first in the automaker’s 87-year history in the country. Volkswagen plans to close at least three factories, lay off thousands of workers, and trim pay for those remaining by 10%, all as it fights to stay alive amid stiff competition from China.  

The strikes today include Volkswagen’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, as well as demonstrations at the Hanover plant, which employs around 14,000 people. Demonstrations are also expected at component and auto plants including Emdem, Saltzgitter, and Brunswick.

IG Metall has also called on employees of VW’s EV-only plant Zwickau, run by a Volkswagen subsidiary, to strike on Monday and Tuesday.

In late October, Volkswagen announced that it would officially close its Audi plant in Brussels where it makes the Audi Q8 E-Tron after huge rallies blocked the Belgian capital over the potential closing of the plant.

Today’s walkouts are the largest at Volkswagen’s German operation since 2018, with that strike involving 50,000 workers over pay disputes.

This comes at a time when VW is radically restructuring its business to cut costs, while seeking to streamline production and development processes, shaving off months on the development cycles of specific projects to help tighten the belts, all while rethinking its EV retail model to stay more competitive. Volkswagen has been facing a steep decline in sales in China, which is its core market, while simultaneously facing challenges from BYD and other Chinese automakers entering the European market.

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