Tens of thousands of auto workers across Germany have staged protests demanding protection for employment and factories after Volkswagen announced plans to cut 100,000 jobs.

Employees at Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Porsche, and their major suppliers took part in more than 280 actions nationwide on Monday.

Germany’s largest industrial union, IG Metall, has warned that the country’s automotive industry ‘faces the risk of total collapse’ as it grapples with high energy costs following anti-Russian sanctions, the end of imports of Russian oil and gas, US tariffs, and growing competition from China.

‘We expect corporate leaders and management teams to take responsibility for Germany as an automotive nation, for employees and for jobs,’ IG Metall chief Christiane Benner told workers at Volkswagen’s headquarters in Wolfsburg.

Volkswagen’s planned reductions include some 50,000 previously announced cuts across its brands and another 50,000 under a new agreement.

The company also slashed its 2026 operating-margin forecast on Friday to no more than 1%, citing weakness in China, restructuring costs, and problems at Porsche.

Other German carmakers are also scaling back. BMW is cutting about 8,000 jobs, while Mercedes-Benz is reducing production at home and expanding capacity in lower-cost Hungary.

The industrial contraction extends beyond layoffs. Volkswagen ended car production at its Dresden plant last December, marking the first closure of a German car factory in the company’s 90-year history.

The automaker has also dropped out of the Euro Stoxx 50 for the first time in 15 years, with its shares down more than 75% from their 2021 peak.

THE REMARKABLE PROPHECY OF ADOLF HITLER.  ‘Then things will come to such a pass that we shall be a people working for alien masters. Germany will be a plantation worked at the will of the alien, the victim of alien cupidity, with a government which has ceased to be a government at all since it governs no longer; it is but a bailiff carrying out the orders of foreign powers.’ – Adolf Hitler, Munich. 20 April 1923.

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