Trade unions and the management at the Audi car plant in the Brussels municipality of Vorst have reached an agreement on the reopening of the factory. Production will resume next Tuesday. However, the long-term future of Audi Brussels remains uncertain.
Audi plant to reopen on Tuesday after agreement between unions and management, uncertainty over redundancies remains
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Trade unions and the management at the Audi car plant in the Brussels municipality of Vorst have reached an agreement on the reopening of the factory. Production will resume next Tuesday. However, the long-term future of Audi Brussels remains uncertain.
After having failed to find an agreement between the two sides in the dispute on Wednesday, the mediator was able to get management and the unions to reach agreement after many hours on shuttle diplomacy that got under way on Thursday afternoon and didn’t conclude until early on Friday morning.
In a statement released on Friday morning management said “We would like to thank everyone who participated in this constructive dialogue”.
Restart in phases with those that are willing to work
The plan is to resume work from Tuesday with those that are willing to start work again. Jan Baetens of the Christian trade union ACV said that “We assume that 75% of the workforce will want to start work again on Tuesday. After that, this number will increase, I'm sure. Those that don’t want to start back will be laid off and will be able to claim temporary unemployment benefit”.
Management has agreed to pay staff at the plant for this week. Audi Brussels was due to have re-opened on Tuesday 10 September. However, management kept the plant closed, preventing those that wished to work from working.
Production to start-up again in phases
Tuesday 17 September, the bodywork and paint shops will be restarted and cars will be able to n be sent to dealers again from the plant. On Wednesday, the entire plant will be operational again.
No redundancies this year?
The long-term future of Audi Brussels has not yet been discussed. Mr Baetens told VRT News that “Talks about this will also restart on Tuesday”.
The socialist trade union ABVV says that management has no agreed that there will be no redundancies before the end of the year. Previously there had been talk of 1,500 redundancies as early as next month. However, management will neither confirm nor deny this.
Audi Brussels spokesman Peter D'Hoore told VRT News that “I can't comment on that at this stage. Base on the current production plan it is indeed looking reasonably good. However, the plan is revised on a monthly basis.”
Audi Brussels currently employs around 3,000 people.
Factory closed for more than a week
Meanwhile, the dispute at Audi has dragged on for 10 days. In early September, the Volkswagen Group of which Audi is a part announced that it would not be assigning a new model to its Brussels plant. This was seen as probably being a prelude to closure.
The workers at the plant decided that they wouldn’t work to express their dissatisfaction with the management's lack of clarity about their future. Management then decided to temporarily close the plant until the workforce was prepared to return to work.