Volkswagen CEO's Speech to Workers Drowned Out By Boos After He Says Company 'Isn't Operating in a Fantasy World'
Volkswagen CEO's Speech to Workers Drowned Out By Boos After He Says Company 'Isn't Operating in a Fantasy World'
The carmaker has been in heated discussions with unions after announcing this fall that it would have to take drastic measures to cut costs
The carmaker has been in heated discussions with unions after announcing this fall that it would have to take drastic measures to cut costs
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Volkswagen: “We’re making €18 billion this year, so naturally, it’s time to slash jobs and squeeze the people actually keeping the company running.”
Meanwhile, the execs are over here stacking 15-25% raises every year like it’s Monopoly money. But sure, cutting worker salaries by 10% will totally boost morale. Nothing says “we value you” like a kick in the wallet.
Man, this is the same story every time. Companies rake in bigger profits, then lay off workers like they’re the problem.
People who gave them years of work get dumped into poverty or instability, and the execs act like it’s just business.
Meanwhile, you know they’re gonna be knocking on the government’s door for some bailout money. Absolute joke.
C-suite execs and board members should be required to work a couple weeks a year filing in for several of their lowest-paid workers. Maybe even staying with them so they see how their workers are forced to live.
If that happens, they'll probably just restructure it so that they're the only members of the company, and everyone else under them is part of a new company wholly owned and operated by the original company.
Sounds like my previous company.
We're expecting our revenue next quarter to be between -2% and +2% compared to this quarter. As a result we will not be giving anybody a raise and there will only be an absolute minimum of promotions. In other news we made all our targets this year, have a 8% growth and will be raising the bar on all targets for next year.
And they asked my why I quit.
Wait what I thought VAG was unprofitable and has been for a while?
Not unprofitable.
They just set impossible profit expectations and doing everything to reach them to keep shareholders happy.
So even if they are making record profits, they're still not meeting the expectations they set. And that's bad for investors.
I checked and they have over 200 billion in debt. The debt has been steadily growing since 2008 so no wonder someone wants see results. If they stop innovating and taking debt they most likely die so it’s not a good situation to be in.
Based on their Q3 2024 Financial Report (p. 23):
The Volkswagen Group generated sales revenue of €237.3 (235.1) billion in the period from January to September 2024.
The Volkswagen Group’s operating result amounted to €12.9 (16.2) billion in the first nine months of 2024. The operating return on sales was 5.4 (6.9)%.
So ya, they are plenty profitable. The line just isn't going up this year. Time to cut jobs.
https://companiesmarketcap.com/volkswagen/total-debt/
Sales slowing and “Total debt on the balance sheet as of September 2024 : $219.94 Billion USD”
I don’t think the point of negative profit isn’t too far with these numbers, especially if sales keep going down. They keep taking on more debt than they make profit for many years.
What are you talking about? Over the last 10 years, there was only one year when they weren't profitable (2015, 1.58 billion euros loss after they had to defer more then 16 billion euros because of their diesel shenanigans), every other year they were making billions. In fact, only in '16 and '20 were they "only" in the single digit billions, the remaining 7 years they made 10+ billions in profit, with the most recent year '23 being a record year in both, revenue (322 billion euros) and profit (16 billion euros).
Their debt is being paid and then some. This is not an issue.