Europe’s largest automaker, Volkswagen, is to shed 50,000 jobs by the end of the decade, as it faces falling sales in China and North America and punitive US tariffs imposed by Donald Trump.
The 10-brand group, whose luxury subsidiaries Porsche and Audi are also under pressure, said the jobs would go in Germany, affecting the entire group, as part of a restructuring drive in light of the darkening global business climate.
The group had already struck a deal with German trade unions at the end of 2024 to slash 35,000 jobs by 2030, in part by natural attrition through retirement and other staff departures.
That’s such a despicable salesman trick, I almost completely lost respect for a friend once, when I found out he did something almost identical to his customers.
IDK if it is company policy for VW to do that, it could be the salesperson.
It’s a capitalist world we live in, but unfortunately of all the models we have tried, democracy with regulated capitalism seems to be the least bad model we have figured out how to make work somewhat reasonably.
That said profits are necessary for future investments, without profits the company dies. That would be true even if society wasn’t capitalistic. Then the resources for investments in maintenance and improvements would just have to come from somewhere else.