GERMANY: At its meeting in Dresden on October 17-18, the European Works Council of the Volkswagen group discussed the current developments in the automobile industry and their effects on Volkswagen and its subsidiaries.
Orders are expected to decrease and the question of distributing the orders to the different existing plants of Volkswagen will be the challenge for the future. "International trade union solidarity and cooperation within the workers' representation bodies, which has been built up over the last years, must now prove its worth," stated Klaus Volkert, the president of the VW EWC, at the meeting.
The Volkswagen EWC also passed a resolution which demands that governments - especially that of Germany - launch a bonus programme for offering incentives to replace older cars and order new, technically and environmentally more developed ones. In Germany alone, there are still over 6 million older cars without a catalytic converter.
Such a programme, which can easily be paid for out of tax income (VAT), could help smooth out the downturn of the economy.