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Volkswagen's supervisory board has approved 50,000 further job cuts at the carmaker controlled by Germany's billionaire Porsche-Piëch family, doubling the reductions announced across the group's brands since late 2024.
The measures, backed unanimously at a meeting in Wolfsburg on Thursday, give chief executive Oliver Blume his clearest mandate yet to restructure Europe's largest carmaker. They also clear the way to cut the group's vehicle lineup by as much as half by 2035.
About half the new cuts fall on German operations. The total represents roughly 8 percent of Volkswagen's global workforce at the end of last year. The company has not said where the other half lands.
Blume runs the company but does not own it. Porsche Automobil Holding SE, the vehicle through which the Porsche and Piëch families hold their stake owns 31.4 percent of Volkswagen's equity and 53.3 percent of its voting rights, giving the family control of Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Škoda, SEAT and MAN.
The family patriarchs, Wolfgang Porsche and Hans Michel Piëch, are both in their eighties, and succession within the dynasty is unresolved. A restructuring of this scale is being signed off by a family in the middle of its own generational handover.
Volkswagen's Kariega plant in the Eastern Cape employs about 3,600 people directly, draws on 1,440 suppliers and supports an estimated 50,000 indirect jobs. It is the only plant in the world building the Polo, exporting to 38 countries, and it also builds the Polo Vivo for the domestic market.
It has been performing. In July it produced 17,009 vehicles, beating its own record. Volkswagen has committed R4 billion (about $250 million) to the site, plans to build the Tukan bakkie there and will add the Tengo from 2027. The group also runs assembly operations in Kenya, Rwanda and Ghana.
But South Africa's parliament called the global restructuring a "wake-up call" in July, when the programme was reported as potentially reaching 100,000 roles. No plant closures outside Europe have been announced, and most of the capacity reduction is expected to fall there. With half of Thursday's 50,000 unallocated in public, that is reassurance rather than a guarantee.
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