Germany business newspaper Handelsblatt reports that the Audi staff council has refused to agree to an increase in working hours without a compensatory pay increase.
According to the report, Xaver Meier, the chairman of the staff council, said that an increase in the number of hours worked per week to forty would mean that the number of staff needed at the company’s site in Ingolstadt alone would fall by 4,000. And for that reason, the staff council said that it couldn’t agree to the plan.
Martin Winterkorn, the head of Audi, had reportedly said after an agreement was reached regarding pay at Volkswagen, that action would need to be taken at Audi.