This week it's that time again.

Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess has called his most important executives together for a management conference in the Kitzbühel Alps, specifically: in Alpbach.

The Austrian village at the foot of the 1898 meter high Gratlspitz offers a congress center and plenty of space for team building - from hiking to mountain biking.

The topics that have been discussed there since Wednesday are serious, however.

Above all, the workload at the Wolfsburg parent plant has recently come into focus and is causing a stir.

Christian Müßgens

Business correspondent in Hamburg.

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Diess had already made it clear at the September meeting of the Supervisory Board that the matter was explosive.

There he is said to have presented an alarming scenario that could occur if the supply crisis of electronic chips continues or the scheduling of important future projects by VW has to be reconsidered.

30,000 jobs

In the worst case, he warned, up to 30,000 jobs in the core VW brand could be at risk.

First, the Handelsblatt reported on the initiative that Diess is said to have made at the end of the meeting under the agenda item “Miscellaneous”, surprising for all participants, as reported from informed circles.

As a reaction there was a debate in which representatives of the works council and the state of Lower Saxony as co-owners objected.

On Wednesday, it was said in the environment of the works council that Diess had probably referred to the VW crisis in 1994.

There, job cuts in the same amount had been averted during the four-day week.

At that time, however, the group was down, unlike today, at least from the point of view of the employee representatives.

IG Metall said on Wednesday: "It is clear that job cuts of 30,000 jobs are not debatable." If such extreme scenarios are seriously discussed, it is a "frontal attack on the transformation of our industry."

Competition intensifies

VW, on the other hand, sees itself in competition with more efficient rivals such as Tesla. While the US manufacturer only plans 10,000 employees a year for 500,000 e-cars, the largest German VW plant in Wolfsburg built around 700,000 vehicles with 25,000 employees before the Corona crisis, it is said. The comparison is now even more direct with the new Tesla plant in Brandenburg, as a company spokeswoman emphasizes. "There is no question that we have to deal with the competitiveness of our plant in Wolfsburg in view of the new market participants." In Grünheide, Tesla will "set new standards in productivity and scales." She referred to the Trinity project in Wolfsburg, that offers the opportunity to “revolutionize the local location and secure jobs in the long term.“Trinity should become a basis for new e-models and at the same time streamline the entire added value.

In the past few years, Diess had repeatedly fought conflicts with the works council, which in the meantime had almost led to his expulsion. The fact that a debate is boiling up again has to do with the timing. On November 12th, the Supervisory Board will hold its planning meeting, in which the investments for the next few years will be tightened. The employee representatives are calling for the course to be set there in order to bring a new e-model to Wolfsburg before the start of Trinity in 2025 and 2026 and to improve capacity utilization there.

The prospects for this are not bad, but at the same time the VW boss is worried about making the plant more efficient.

One cannot “preach water and then drink wine in Wolfsburg” at other locations, it is said from those around him, with a view to the comparatively poor productivity.

Capacity utilization is particularly weak at the moment, which has to do with the current shortage of semiconductors, which is also affecting other locations.

So the executives have a lot to discuss at the management conference in Alpbach.