Pamplona (EFE).- The works council of Volkswagen Navarra has shown this Monday in a manifesto its desire that the Landaben factory lead the transformation process towards the production of electric vehicles of all the Group’s plants in the Iberian Peninsula.
Workers from Volkswagen Navarra and from supplier companies have gathered at the main gate of the factory with a banner with the slogan “For the future of the automotive sector in Navarra”.
At the rally, which was attended, among others, by the general secretaries of the UGT and CCOO in Navarra, Jesús Santos and Chechu Rodríguez, respectively, a manifesto was read that the committee will deliver to the management of the multinational at a meeting that will take place this Thursday and Friday in Germany.
Have a future beyond 2026
In this manifesto, signed by the representatives of the company committees present at this event, the unions ensure that the workers of Volkswagen Navarra must be “active participants in the transformation process of the automobile industry in the Iberian Peninsula”.
In this sense, they request that, in this process of transformation and reconversion towards the manufacture of electric and connected vehicles, “Volkswagen Navarra and our supplier park continue to be strategic for the company beyond the year 2026”.
“In other words, that this reindustrialization process not only maintains what we currently have, but also allows us to grow, given our competitive conditions demonstrated throughout our long history,” the manifesto underlines.
For this reason, spaces for dialogue are called for to achieve the objective that “this conversion process not only leaves no one out, but also allows us to grow”.
The document has been signed, in addition to the Volkswagen committee, representatives of SAS, PAM, IAC Group, Neimsa Aoiz Grupo Cosmos, ISN, Tecnoconfort, Plastic Omnium, ID Logistis, Volkswagen Group Services, Landaben Logistij Grupo SESE, SNAL, Tradisa, Schneleke SL , Faurecia Emission Technology and Gestamp.
Morales: “We are at a key moment”
The president of the Volkswagen Navarra works council, Alfredo Morales, declared at this meeting that, within this “complicated and difficult” period for the automotive industry, “today we are facing a key moment, because the decisions that will to affect our entire sector, that is, our plant and our entire industrial fabric”.
“Decisions are already being made that are going to clarify, they are going to clarify what the industrial future of our sector is going to be and, as a consequence, of the thousands of workers who belong to it,” he stated.
The committee of the Pamplona plant, he added, is not satisfied with the fact that the current workforce is not going to have problems, because doing nothing “could mean that within three years our sector will be 50% less than what we currently have” .
He has conveyed the message that “we are going to make it very difficult if someone is thinking of undermining our performance and what we are as a factory and as a sector” and has stressed that they are “tired of paying other people’s bills”, in reference to other Group plants.
Workers do not feel “well treated”
Morales has subsequently asserted to the media that in Volkswagen Navarra they do not feel “well treated” and has demanded that the same investments that are already committed to the Seat factory be guaranteed.
In this regard, he has indicated that the construction of a battery cell assembly plant at the Volkswagen Navarra facilities “is a key element right now for the future technological development of our factory”, within the framework of the investments planned for its electrification. .
Regarding that factory, he said, “the only thing we receive from the Group is the same, there is no financing, an aspect that we cannot understand.” While other plants “already have fundamental elements of investment, such as the press or the assembly factory, we are told that there is no financing,” he lamented.
The chairman of the committee explained that the forecast for the plant in Pamplona for 2026 is to manufacture two electric SUVs for Skoda and Volkswagen, and work is being done to maintain the production of a small number of combustion vehicles, which “will be very useful for cushion the possible impact that electric vehicles may have” if their demand is not as expected.
This strategy, he commented, “is very well planned, but we need production volumes” of 350,000 cars with the plant’s maximum capacity.