PAME salutes the mobilisations of Volkswagen workers in Germany, who are fighting against the new plans for mass layoffs and plant closures. They demand that their jobs and rights not be sacrificed for the Group’s profits.

The slogan displayed on their banners, “Our jobs are not accounting adjustments on your balance sheet,” encapsulates a great truth, behind the arithmetic of corporate profits lie the lives of tens of thousands of workers and their families.

Volkswagen’s management is planning further cuts, plant closures, layoffs and a hiring freeze. At the same time, the Group’s pre-tax profits reached €8.9 billion.

Using the threat of unemployment, management is seeking to blackmail workers into accepting, as their “salvation,” the conversion of factories into links in the chain of the war industry, serving the imperialist wars of the EU, the US and NATO.

It’s planned to convert a car manufacturing plant in Osnabrück, which employs 2,300 workers, into a facility producing components for missile systems, in cooperation even with Rafael, Israel’s state-owned arms manufacturer.

It is proven once again that whether the profits of business groups rise or are squeezed amid intensifying competition and trade conflicts for dominance in international markets, whether in “peace” or in war, workers are always called upon to foot the bill.

The enormous productive potential, technology and scientific knowledge created by workers themselves through their labour can be used, rather than serving profits and war, to meet the needs of the people and guarantee stable jobs with rights, without turning workers into accomplices in the slaughter of other peoples or into targets for retaliation.

We stand firmly with Volkswagen workers and support their struggle!

No sacrifice for their profits and their wars!