By Christoph Steitz
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – When labour unions step into the ring with Volkswagen (ETR:) executives on Wednesday to combat over job safety and plant closures, it can mark the hardest take a look at but for essentially the most highly effective determine on the automaker behind its CEO: Daniela Cavallo.
However the 49-year-old Italian-German will even seem a formidable opponent for managers, having risen by the ranks to grow to be the primary feminine head of the corporate’s works council, styling herself as a defender of the “Volkswagen household”.
The negotiations begin lower than a month after Volkswagen mentioned it’d shut crops in Germany for the primary time. That ended a two-year truce between unions and managers, highlighting that whereas battle briefly subsided underneath Cavallo and Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume, the trade’s issues didn’t.
“Sadly, I’ve received to confess that that is the darkest day to this point,” Cavallo mentioned earlier this month, hours after Volkswagen advised staff of plans to probably shut crops and finish long-standing job ensures.
Excessive power and labour prices, together with weakening demand in Europe, left administration no selection however to take drastic measures, the corporate argued, breaking two taboos that Cavallo mentioned marked a serious cultural change at Europe’s largest automaker.
Her feedback, in keeping with two individuals accustomed to the matter, mirror Cavallo’s deep dedication to Wolfsburg-based Volkswagen, the place she has spent her total profession, ultimately turning into works council chief in 2021.
In addition they present the dispute is extra than simply enterprise for a employee born and raised in Wolfsburg – it has been a household affair ever since her father swapped southern Italy for Germany in 1969 to affix the agency.
In the present day, Cavallo, her husband and two sisters are all a part of Volkswagen’s roughly 680,000 international workforce, together with the 130,000 VW model staff in Germany affected by the dispute.
‘REASON TO FIGHT’
“Each single one of many 130,000 staff is cause sufficient to combat,” Cavallo, one of many 20 members of Volkswagen’s supervisory board, advised Reuters.
“But it surely’s not simply in regards to the 130,000 colleagues. It is also about their households, the suppliers and repair suppliers round them and, final however not least, your complete areas the place the crops are situated.”
Cavallo, who joined Volkswagen in 1994 to coach as an workplace clerk, shortly caught the eye of rising union star Bernd Osterloh for serving to to barter fewer shifts at Auto 5000, a former unit that didn’t take pleasure in the identical advantages as VW staff.
Osterloh later turned head of Volkswagen’s works council, a place he held for 15 years, incomes the nickname “King of Wolfsburg” as he used the numerous historic powers granted to staff on the group to their full extent.
As Osterloh rose, so did Cavallo, who turned the primary works council member in Wolfsburg to take maternity depart, beforehand thought-about a no-go in a historically male-dominated sector.
“She’s not impulsive, however structured,” one of many individuals mentioned. “That does not imply she’s much less efficient. In the case of enterprise she’s simply as robust.”
In reality, Cavallo is thought for patiently however persistently sticking to a degree, the individuals mentioned.
When Volkswagen negotiated a pact round electrical mobility in 2016, Cavallo insisted that jobs may solely be minimize if there was tangible proof that they had been not wanted, elevating the bar for layoffs.
Whether or not she succeeds in avoiding plant closures, a crimson line she has drawn forward of negotiations, might also rely on how she wields her strongest weapon – strikes – which may, in concept, happen from Dec. 1.
