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It is a turning point for Volkswagen, Germany's largest industrial group: Bernd Osterloh, head of the works council since 2005 and one of the most important men in the management circle of the supervisory board, is moving into management.
The 64-year-old hands over the post to his deputy Daniela Cavallo (46).
The works council announced that the employee committees and IG Metall had already voted in favor of the successor.
Cavallo is also expected to take over the supervisory board position soon.
"Necessary steps for your appointment through the registry court have already been initiated", it says in the message.
After 16 years at the head of the works council and 44 years in the company, Osterloh has a power base at VW that is second to none.
At the same time, employees have significantly more say in terms of the works constitution than in other companies.
Over the past few years, this has repeatedly led to conflicts with CEO Herbert Diess, which were also carried out in public.
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Osterloh liked to place subtle taunts against the CEO, for example in ambiguous photos on his Instagram channel.
He always stood for “a clear course and unequivocal announcements,” said Osterloh.
“In doing so, I never showed any wrong consideration for people.
And that's exactly how I feel about myself at the end of my term of office. "
As of May 1st, he will be the Chief Human Resources Officer at Volkswagen's truck subsidiary Traton in Munich.
This has been decided by the company's supervisory board;
the post had been vacant since last year.
This does not exactly make the complex informal power structures in the group any more transparent.
But the tone in Wolfsburg is likely to change.
Arndt Ellinghorst, analyst at Bernstein Research, sees an improvement in the balance of power in favor of management.
"The sharpest opponent of Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess is moving to the side and you can say that this creates the opportunity to lead VW more rationally," he says.
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The personnel also help Diess with his ambitions to extend his contract beyond 2023.
A corresponding attempt failed last year due to Osterloh's resistance, among other things.
As a board member, the ex-works council will not be cut off from its network in the company.
Formally, however, he will be in the "line" in the future: his boss, Matthias Gründler, as Traton CEO, reports to the VW Group Executive Board Gunnar Kilian, whose superior is Herbert Diess.
Kilian, however, is considered a close confidante of Osterloh, he was once general secretary of the group works council.
Osterloh also knows the Traton supervisory board, which will oversee him in the future, very well: he has so far been a member of the committee himself.
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Also because everyone is connected to everyone else, a lot of praise comes from the company and its environment.
As a works council, Osterloh “questioned the management constructively and thus repeatedly helped to find solutions that were geared to the company's interests,” said Diess.
Prime Minister Stephan Weil, who represents the state of Lower Saxony as a major shareholder on the supervisory board, thanked Osterloh for "accompanying the workforce through difficult times with great commitment and a clear compass and for having negotiated and fought for a lot for the employees over and over again".
The spokesmen for the owner families, Wolfgang Porsche and Hans Michel Piëch, described it as a matter of course that "as shareholders on the Volkswagen Supervisory Board, we set different priorities on certain issues than Mr. Osterloh as the Chairman of the Works Council".
However, there is no question that he is qualified for the new post due to his “entrepreneurial skills and his high level of professional competence”.
"We therefore expect him to make a decisive contribution to the ongoing restructuring in the Traton Group."
There are tough tasks ahead of Osterloh.
Especially at the Traton subsidiary MAN, he has to push through an austerity program.
3500 jobs are to be cut and several plants are to be downsized.
The future of the factory in Steyr, Austria, which MAN actually wanted to sell to the investor Siegfried Wolf is still open.
This was prevented by the workforce, who voted against it in a majority.
How things will continue there, Osterloh will have to negotiate with his previous colleague Saki Stimoniaris.
The works council chairman of MAN and Traton is now formally his opponent.
Stimoniaris said it was “in a good step for the colleagues and for the company” that Osterloh becomes head of human resources.
"His decades of experience in the group and in the industry will bring Traton forward." He sees Cavallo as his successor "with enormous support from the workforce, committees, IG Metall and also within the group".
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Osterloh described Cavallo as "strong in leadership, empathic and thinking so strategically that many will still be surprised." She brought everything with her at the right time to assert the interests of the employees as usual.
Cavallo is to run for IG Metall at VW next year as the top candidate in the works council election and the election of employee representatives on the supervisory board.
From the union's point of view, it is a “super election year” that only happens every 20 years.
The candidate lists are to be drawn up in May.
The Italian was born in Wolfsburg and has been with Volkswagen since 1994.
She completed a degree in business administration while working; in 2002 she was elected to a works council for the then Group subsidiary Auto 5000 GmbH for the first time.
She has been Osterloh's deputy since the beginning of 2019.
Her predecessor "embodied our co-determination at the forefront for 16 years," said Cavallo.
"We want to continue our great success of the past few years and for this we will again develop a strong mandate from our workforce in 2022." The challenges posed by the transformation of VW and the industry remained great.
In addition to the change at the top of the employee representatives, it almost went under the fact that Diess was apparently able to win a new board member for the transformation: Katrin Suder, former State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Defense and former McKinsey advisor, is considered the favorite for the newly created post of IT director.
In the coming week, the supervisory board could decide on the personnel.
The physicist Suder was brought to the Ministry of Defense by today's EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2014.
In the wake of the consultant affair, she withdrew in 2018.
The 49-year-old is currently the head of the Federal Government's Digital Council.
Osterloh had long called for a separate board member for IT.