Employees at the Audi plant in Brussels, who were due to return to work on Wednesday morning, have gone on strike after learning that the carmaker’s management will no longer entrust them with any models to assemble beyond 2025. “Nobody started working again this morning”Dirk Everaert, a leader of the Christian union CSC, told AFP, while around 200 workers were expected at the sheet metal workshop to resume work after weeks of summer break.
In early July, Audi, a subsidiary of German manufacturer Volkswagen, announced that it was considering closing the Belgian site that produces its Q8 e-tron SUV, due to a drop in demand for this high-end electric car model. On Tuesday, during a works council meeting, the subsidiary confirmed that no more models would be built at the site – which employs around 3,000 people – after the end of production of the Q8 e-tron next year.
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“Potential investors”
No other VW Group cars will be manufactured at the site, “but there are other scenarios”said management spokesman Peter D’hoore. “We are talking with potential investors”he added. According to the unions, stopping production at the site, located in the Brussels municipality of Forest, could mean the departure of 2,600 of the 3,000 employees by May 2025, not counting subcontractors whose activity depends on Audi’s assembly lines. The CSC and FGTB (socialist) union representatives of Audi managers and workers were to decide on the next steps of the protest movement on Wednesday.
A call for demonstrations in the streets of Brussels in mid-September is being considered. This week, Volkswagen, Europe’s largest carmaker, said it was considering an unprecedented cost-cutting plan in the company’s history, with factory closures in Germany and mass layoffs, in order to cope with a “extremely tense situation” for his activity.
