To understand just how deep the challenges that Volkswagen is facing, it is worth considering the position of Gunnar Kilian.
He is the German carmaker’s head of human resources and a member of its management board. But Kilian is also former general secretary of the works council, the main body representing VW employees and now in negotiations with the company over its taboo-breaking potential first closure of a factory in Germany. And before that, he was an assistant to the former VW chair and main family shareholder.
Few people better illustrate the VW system, an interlinked network of managers, workers, politicians and family shareholders that has fostered the carmaker’s notoriously bad governance and poor financial performance. That is now coming to a head as VW faces its biggest crisis in decades as it negotiates with the works council over tens of thousands of job cuts and potential factory closures.