Union power and the green automotive transition: comparing bargaining episodes in the US and Germany,2023–2024

Abstract

This article contributes to the debate on union efforts to shape decarbonisation of their industries by examining collective bargaining that impacted the transition to electric vehicles (EVs) in the auto industry. We compare the 2023 bargaining round between the United Auto Workers and the Detroit Three car makers in the US with the 2024 negotiations between IG Metall and Volkswagen in Germany. Both unions launched strikes, but while the UAW secured strong gains, IG Metall made major concessions. Applying power resource theory, we examine the two bargaining rounds to find explanations. The greater associational and institutional power of IG Metall conferred no advantage; equally, the UAW’s militant strategy alone does not explain its success. Rather, the outcomes were critically shaped by how the unions’ structural power – their ability to disrupt production and market exchange – was conditioned by two external factors: EV market volatility and high-level political support for the ‘green’ transition.

Introduction

Trade unions play a crucial role in the restructuring of many industrial sectors undergoing decarbonisation. In the political arena, unions may support, hedge, or oppose the progress of government climate policies (Thomas and Doerflinger, 2020). As industry insiders, they can shape concrete transition strategies at the levels of companies and sectors using diverse power resources to avoid unfavourable transformation paths (Dupuis et al., 2024).

This article looks at the global automotive industry, which is currently undergoing restructuring in connection with the transition to low- and zero-emissions powertrains (Krzywdzinski et al., 2025). Across the sector’s value chain, companies have recently closed their old factories making internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs), opened new ones to enter the new product markets, and converted their existing facilities to electric vehicle (EV) or battery production. In several key Western markets – including the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) – these strategies have been shaped by government policies such as increasingly restrictive emission standards and technology-selective firm or consumer subsidies.

However, this ongoing transformation has recently created significant uncertainty within the auto industry across developed economies (Lechowski et al., 2025), posing challenges for trade unions’ ‘just transition’ strategies. In particular, sales growth of full-electric vehicles significantly slowed between 2023 and 2024 in the EU and the US, and even declined in Germany (IEA, 2025). Around the same period, rising geo-economic tensions prompted calls for trade barriers, especially in response to China’s growing technological leadership. Reflecting the market challenges, governments have come under pressure to roll back their ambitious sectoral emissions regulations and subsidies.

Against this backdrop, our goal in the present article is to examine two recent cases of trade union interventions that have impacted the course of EV-related restructuring in two major regional automotive sectors. We compare the 2023 collective bargaining round between the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the Detroit Three auto makers (General Motors, Ford, Stellantis) in the US with similar developments in Germany – the 2024 negotiations involving IG Metall and Volkswagen (VW). In both cases, the bargaining became highly contentious, with workers going on strike amid disputes over several EV-related issues.

The starting point of our analysis is that the two bargaining episodes led the unions to markedly different outcomes. The UAW secured significant wage increases, transferred some temporary workers into permanent positions, won new investment commitments in EV production, and improved work and employment conditions at the new battery factories. In Germany, by contrast, IG Metall accepted employment reductions and longer working hours to avoid plant closures and deeper pay cuts. Given German unions’ institutionally stronger position and higher membership density compared with the US (Dupuis et al., 2024; Turner, 1993), this difference is a puzzle.

Our article applies a power resource perspective to explain bargaining outcomes in both cases, and asks two empirical questions:

• – What bargaining strategies have the UAW and IG Metall adopted in the context of the shift to EV production?

• – What factors have contributed to UAW’s success during the 2023 Detroit Three strike, as compared with IG Metall’s concessionary agreement in Germany in 2024?

By addressing these questions, our article contributes to the broader discussion on trade unions as transition actors in green industrial transformation. Conceptually, we highlight the role that volatile and context-dependent power positions of unions play in sectoral and company-level restructuring.

Empirically, we show how the power positions of UAW and IG Metall have differed and evolved (Arnholtz and Refslund, 2024; Flecker, 2024; Greer, 2024; Silver, 2003) in the broader political-economic context of the auto sector. In particular, the structural power of workers – that is, their ability to disrupt production and market exchange – was dynamically shaped by differences in high-level political support for domestic EV production and the ebbs and flows of consumer demand for EVs. The US strike in 2023 took place against a backdrop of strong vehicle sales (both ICEVs and EVs) and robust corporate investments (related to profit expectations and government subsidies). By contrast, the German union at the end of 2024 was placed in a weaker position due to market stagnation, foreign competitive pressure, and the reduction of government support for EVs, leading to cost-cutting plans by the employer.

The article is structured as follows. Section 2 (Conceptualising labour contestation in the decarbonisation of industries) places the case study in the context of the just transition literature and introduces a conceptual framework for examining trade union power positions in the decarbonisation of industries. Section 3 (Case studies: the two bargaining rounds) empirically reconstructs the two episodes of labour contestation in the auto sector. Section 4 (Discussion and conclusions) compares the two bargaining rounds and explains their different outcomes using the concepts of union power resources and evolving power positions; it concludes by highlighting the key implications.

Conceptualising labour contestation in the decarbonisation of industries

Just transition and business-labour power inequalities

A growing body of political-economic literature examines restructuring processes toward ‘green’ technologies in emissions-intensive sectors from the perspective of material conflicts these processes generate among industry actors (Meckling, 2011; Mildenberger, 2020). Ambitious climate policies reduce demand for emissions-intensive products and create business opportunities for low-carbon alternatives – thus disrupting existing market and value chain structures.

The political and academic debate over ‘just transition’ adds to this an explicit emphasis on the interest positions of labour. In industrial relations research, scholars have discussed policy paths that aim to restructure emissions-intensive sectors while, simultaneously, securing existing employment and creating new ‘green’ jobs. Some of this literature explores the possibility of transformative trade union identities and political discourse – often drawing on statements by union leaders and their public communication (Dupuy and Pasquier, 2024; Morena et al., 2019). Other contributions, however, have begun to more openly address the uncertain economic outcomes and conflicts of interests linked to ‘green’ transition policies (Kalt, 2022; Thomas and Doerflinger, 2020). As Vachon (2018) stressed, although some unions indeed view industrial emissions reduction as part of socially sustainable economic transformation, others take more ambiguous positions or openly resist transformative climate policies. From an interest-based perspective (see e.g. Haas and Jürgens, 2019), the key factor determining union strategy is whether workers see viable employment prospects and business opportunities for their companies within decarbonisation paths.

While the specificity and variety of labour positions in the decarbonisation of industries has already been recognised in the literature, less attention has been paid to the question of how collective contestation and conflict may influence sectoral or company-level restructuring. Large parts of the ‘just transition’ debate have focused on the macro-level picture by examining whether workers and unions support or oppose high-level national ‘climate change strategies’ (Thomas and Doerflinger, 2020). Far less attention has been paid to the concrete bargaining processes within firms or sectors undergoing decarbonisation (Carbonell et al., 2025) and to how business-labour power dynamics shape outcomes.

The power of workers in the EV transition

The automotive sector in Germany and the US represents an important case to explore labour power in the green industrial transition. First, in both countries, automotive labour remains economically and politically significant. The sector employs around 800,000 persons in vehicle and component manufacturing in both countries – though it is more prominent in Germany due to the relatively smaller size of its national economy (Harp and Prasad, 2024; Statista, 2024). Furthermore, in both Germany and the US, the future of automotive employment is now increasingly uncertain. In particular, many jobs are at risk in connection with the shift to electric powertrain technologies and the related evolution of international competition. In addition, it remains unclear whether new jobs needed to make EVs will be better or worse than the old ones, and how smoothly the displaced workers can be re-integrated into the labour market or welfare system (Dupuis et al., 2024).

Concerning the projected quantitative impacts of the EV shift, estimates for both countries vary, based on assumptions about how production is organised and where it takes place (see Krzywdzinski et al., 2023). Negative predictions have, however, strongly shaped public debate. In Germany, a recent study by the automotive industry association VDA (2024) projected that, by 2035, net employment in the auto sector will be approximately 190,000 jobs lower than in 2019, when the EV transition began to pick up pace. For the US, a transformation scenario assuming limited government support found that a market shift with a 50 per cent battery-electric vehicle (BEV) sales share by 2030 would have eliminated tens of thousands of domestic automotive jobs (Barrett and Bivens, 2021). At the same time, we need to note that negative impacts will vary across the sector’s value chain – especially, between the relatively well-positioned car makers and many suppliers more specialised in production of combustion engines.

Most crucially for our analysis, however, the negative labour implications of the EV transition are not inevitable and will be shaped politically. In both the US and Germany, political-economic systems assign trade unions important roles in this process. Beyond lobbying for labour-friendly transformation policies at national or regional levels, unions can defend worker interests at the company level by directly influencing firms’ employment, production, and investment strategies.

How – and how effectively – unions will exercise these roles in both countries is nevertheless uncertain. This mainly stems from the progressive decline of union power in both national auto sectors over the past four decades (Jürgens and Krzywdzinski, 2006; Kochan et al., 1994). In the US, the sector’s main trade union, the UAW, has seen a decline in membership and low unionisation rates, especially in the newer and foreign-owned factories. Since the early 1980s, the union density in the US auto industry declined from about 60 to 15 per cent (Hirsch et al., 2025), significantly reducing the UAW’s associational bargaining power. In terms of institutional power, the role of labour is largely confined to workplace-level negotiations, leaving workers with very limited formal leverage over corporate strategies. Finally, various recent US government policies following the 2008 crisis have additionally pushed the auto industry towards highly concessional bargaining practices – effectively contributing to sectoral wage stagnation and the erosion of benefits.

In Germany, meanwhile, trade unions have indeed retained some influence over company decision-making through co-determination institutions. At its core, German co-determination enables the participation of labour in corporate governance, including through works councils at the plant level and through employee representatives in supervisory boards – both usually linked with unions. Co-determination arrangements allow labour to influence certain investment decisions of companies, which can be very important in the context of the EV transition. At the same time, Germany’s organised labour – and IG Metall as the sector’s largest union – has, since the early 1990s, also faced declining bargaining power. This has been driven primarily by the ongoing internationalisation of production, including the threat of relocations to lower-wage EU or near-shore non-EU regions (Klein and Pettis, 2020). More recently, new pressure was created by low-cost EV imports from China – even despite the introduction of EU-level countervailing tariffs in 2024 (see Lechowski and Weis, 2025).

Collective bargaining dynamics over EVs

The following empirical analysis focuses on two recent collective bargaining rounds in the US and German auto sectors. In both cases, workers went on strike partly in response to current or expected negative impacts of the EV transition, such as threatened plant closures and job cuts – although these concerns intertwined with other and often longer-standing job security and compensation issues.

To explain the different bargaining outcomes and examine in more detail the nature of the power dynamics involved, our analysis draws on power resource theory. Originally developed to highlight how conflicts between labour and capital shaped welfare state institutions in Western societies (Arnholtz and Refslund, 2024; Korpi, 1978), this perspective emphasises the different resources workers can mobilise to defend their interests. Established power resource accounts typically focus on labour’s associational, coalitional, institutional, and structural power (Schmalz and Dörre, 2014; Silver, 2003; Wright, 2000). The first one refers to the capacity for collective organisation; the second to the ability to form alliances with other social actors (unions, political parties, companies); the third one to formalised labour rights and standards; and the last one to labour’s leverage over capital derived from its strategic location in production or market exchange. Strike actions are a key example of how labour applies structural power. Building on existing conceptualisations, recent debates have brought more nuance to power resource theory (Arnholtz and Refslund, 2024), including a stronger emphasis on the dynamic character of power. Differences in labour power are increasingly seen as dependent on volatile market trends, dynamics of supply chains, or national political conditions (Dupuis et al., 2026; Flecker, 2024; Greer, 2024).

Applied in the context of industrial decarbonisation, this analytical perspective helps us explain how labour-business power inequalities and conflicts shape company-level or sectoral restructuring paths. In particular, drawing on the dynamic understanding of labour power (Dupuis et al., 2026; Flecker, 2024), our analysis considers how union positions within the EV transition are shaped by two other key actors involved in the transformation: the automotive companies, understood as both employers and commercial product-market actors; and the state, viewed not only as a ‘green’ policy-maker but also a political actor influencing the business-labour balance of power.

• – First, given the ‘green’ regulatory pressures imposed by governments, many automotive companies are phasing out internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) and building new capabilities for EV production. This transformation requires strategic decisions regarding value-chain specialisation, scale of investments in new products and production facilities, factory location, as well as work and employment conditions in new product areas. The corporate capacity to invest in new products depends, however, on prospective sales and expected profitability of production. Thus, we treat company-level investment decisions as a variable tied to potentially volatile product-market trends.

• – Second, the national transition paths to low- and zero-emissions powertrains in the auto sector fundamentally depend on government regulatory and industrial policies. Such policies support transformative corporate investment and consumer choices, thus accelerating the market shift towards low- or zero-emissions technologies. From a ‘just transition’ perspective, a critical factor is how government policies recognise labour interests relative to those of the automotive companies. For instance, pro-EV government policies can go as far as attaching explicit labour conditionalities to EV subsidies, thereby directly strengthening labour’s power position vis-à-vis employers.

Case studies: the two bargaining rounds

In the following sub-sections, we examine two empirical cases of bargaining linked to the EV transition: (i) the 2023 confrontation between the UAW and the Detroit Three car makers and (ii) the 2024 conflict between IG Metall and VW. The analysis uses the process tracing approach (Bennett and Checkel, 2015) to propose explanations for the diverging bargaining outcomes based on detailed reconstructions of event sequences. We observe similarities and striking differences in terms of labour power positions, including rapid changes in these positions. The purpose of the comparison is to propose explanations of the puzzling outcome: substantial concessions made by IG Metall in Germany and significant gains won in the US by the UAW. Though, as we stress in the final section, any straightforward assessment of labour ‘gains’ requires caution, including with regard to the unions’ long-term goals and strategies.

The case studies draw on expert interviews and trade union documents describing the bargaining and strike events. Interviews were conducted between 2021 and 2025 as part of our broader research project (2021–present) comparing the ‘just transition’ processes in the automotive sector in North America and the European Union. Specifically, we rely on 84 interviews conducted in the US and Germany with trade unionists (UAW, IG Metall), company managers (the Detroit Three in the US, VW in Germany), and policy-makers to reconstruct the regional transition processes, their labour impacts, and the related trade union strategies. A narrower set of interviews focused on the 2023 and 2024 bargaining rounds in the two countries. For the US, seven interviews were conducted with UAW officials in January and February 2024; in Germany we had two interviews with IG Metall members at VW in June 2025 (a high-ranking official involved in the company negotiations and a frontline employee and unionist who provided insights into the membership perceptions). Most interviews were recorded and transcribed; a few others were documented with typed-up notes. Most lasted between 45 and 60 minutes.

To cross-check and supplement the findings from interviews (Bennett and Checkel, 2015), we draw on official documents and communications published online by the UAW and IG Metall throughout the bargaining process. In total, 131 documents were collected for the UAW case and 200 for IG Metall, with the numerical difference resulting from IG Metall’s more regionalised organisational structure. Finally, the analysis also uses media reports – primarily, reports covering public statements and appearances of trade union leaders, company managers, and political figures during the bargaining processes – citing them in the text where relevant.

UAW strike against the Detroit Three in 2023

The 2023 negotiations between the UAW and the Detroit Three companies began around mid-year and focused on developing new master agreements with the companies. The entire bargaining round took place in the context of robust domestic ICEV sales and ambitious plans by all three car makers to enter the EV market. Diverse automotive and economic policy initiatives launched under the Biden administration (2021–2025) encouraged these investments, including through direct subsidies for companies, grants for the development of charging infrastructures, and the tightening of automotive emissions standards (Swiecki and Dziczek, 2025). This stimulated EV sales, which, in 2023, reached 1.1 million – about four times more units than in 2020 (IEA, 2025). Furthermore, the Biden administration introduced trade protection measures to support domestic production, including raising tariffs on Chinese EV imports (to 100 per cent), linking direct subsidies to community benefits plans, and linking consumer tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act to local content and assembly rules.

Although the overall market context placed the UAW in a strong position, the union also faced several challenges. The union entered negotiations with a goal of reclaiming historic gains that had been eroded starting with the Chrysler bailout in 1979 and continuing with the General Motors and Chrysler restructurings in 2009–2010 (Rattner, 2011). The concessions and the partnership-based bargaining style divided the UAW leadership, leading to an exodus of Canadian locals to form the independent Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union in 1985, while the tiered wage structure fuelled distributional conflicts within the membership (Dupuis et al., 2026). The concessions were so severe that median nominal wages were essentially flat from 2005 to 2020 (Dincer et al., 2025), with a deep corresponding decline in real wages. Some of the historical concessions were directly relevant to the EV transition – including pensions, retiree benefits and the ‘jobs banks’ that had previously supported workers affected by plant closures. Furthermore, plant closures led to transfers between production sites, which became a source of grievance towards both management and the UAW (Tapia et al., 2025). The union was further weakened by corruption (Goeddeke and Masters, 2021), which led to the imposition of federal government oversight.

Eventually, this chain of events led to a more democratic union structure and a change in leadership. In particular, a new President, Shawn Fain, was elected in March 2023, only six months before the master agreements expired. The new leadership marked a clear shift in the UAW’s strategy from concessions to militancy (Covarrubias et al., 2025; Lichtenstein, 2024). In the union’s first one-member-one-vote elections, Fain led a slate of candidates supported by the reform group Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), whose lead campaign motto was: ‘No concessions, no corruption, no tiers’.

The EV transition became a key focus of the 2023 negotiations between the union and the car makers. While the three unionised ‘legacy’ US car makers still lagged in the EV market, fiercely anti-union Tesla dominated domestic sales. Even within the Detroit Three, the UAW faced challenges in battery production, with no unionised EV battery plants operating in the entire US as of early 2023. A key part of the transformation strategies of the incumbent US car makers was to produce their batteries within joint ventures with Asian battery makers, operating without any union representation and with lower wages than in existing car-assembly or engine plants. Our interviewees pointed to difficulties in extending collective agreements to these plants under US labour law. Moreover, at the outset of the 2023 bargaining round, companies put additional pressure on labour by idling existing ICEV factories and citing EV investment costs. A key example of this, frequently mentioned by Shawn Fain in his speeches, was the Stellantis plant in Belvidere, Illinois (Boudette and Chiarito, 2022).

During the negotiations, the UAW expressed several demands concerning the EV transition at the car makers. Fain emphasised that the union did not oppose technology shift; what the union wanted was a ‘just transition’. A particularly difficult issue was the inclusion of battery factories in the master agreements, notably Ultium Cells, which General Motors had established without union representation. The union also sought wage increases for workers in various lower compensation tiers, including temporary workers, employees in insourced parts plants, or those hired after the crisis-era concessionary agreements. This was challenging, also given that the UAW’s previous leadership was ready to accept lower wages to attract new investment in the production of parts or vehicle assembly (Dupuis and Greer, 2022). One example of the latter was GM’s Chevy Bolt production in Lake Orion, Michigan. Like previous rounds of bargaining, the union demanded specific investment guarantees for each plant to prevent closures. Unlike previous bargaining rounds, it demanded the right to strike against the companies as a whole during the contract if they reneged on investment to make the guarantees binding. Finally, the UAW called for specific protections related to the expected workforce reductions, such as job guarantees for workers who lost their jobs due to plant closures and benefits improvements for retirees leaving the industry.

The strike against the Detroit Three started in mid-September 2023 and lasted six weeks. For the first time in history, the UAW decided to strike simultaneously at all three Detroit car makers. This increased the national economic and political significance of the action and resonated well with the union’s new militant approach. The UAW communicated more with its members and the public than in the past. The centrepiece of this was speeches of Fain himself, which were streamed live on social media (e.g. Facebook), often involving a dramatic and populist tone. Among other gestures, Fain often denounced corporate greed and wore a t-shirt reading ‘Eat the Rich’. Another innovation lay in the fact that the UAW did not conduct the strike at certain predetermined production plants, but, instead, added new strike targets every week. Every Friday evening, Fain appeared on Facebook live to give an update on gains made at the bargaining table and to announce where strikes would take place next – keeping the plant list secret until the last moment. The targets for strikes were mostly assembly plants and parts distribution centres, with relatively low impact on the companies – while supplier facilities were largely spared, most likely to avoid the idling of larger numbers of production plants dependent on upstream components. Our interviewees pointed out that strikes at suppliers could have created a greater disruption in production at the car makers, led to lay-offs, and drained the union’s strike fund.

Concerning the strike’s economic impact, Shawn Fain often spoke publicly about punishing employers and hurting their profits. However, monthly production data show a smaller decline in vehicles produced during the 2023 strike than the decline recorded during the 2019 strike at General Motors (Dupuis et al., 2026). The Detroit Three lost about a third of their production in October, plus smaller amounts in September, November and December and with smaller effects on sales (Rua and Tito, 2024).

The involvement of high-level national politics was another crucial factor that gave the 2023 bargaining a country-wide significance. The strike took place just before the 2024 presidential election, whose outcome greatly depended on swing states, like Michigan, and their blue-collar workers. The workers received explicit support from Joe Biden’s administration. Fain had criticised Biden a few months earlier due to the weak labour protections built into EV investment policies. The union had also not succeeded in achieving the core demand to attach labour and unionisation conditions to consumer EV subsidies (Hall and Beggin, 2023). Just before the strike, however, the Department of Energy (2023) announced US$15.5bn in grants and loans for existing auto makers to convert to EV production. Additionally, during the strike, on 26 September, President Biden himself appeared in person on a UAW picket line.

Overall, the material assistance from the government enabled the Detroit Three to finance some of the investments that the UAW was demanding and gave the union an additional incentive to support Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. On the other hand, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump also sought to win support from auto workers. For example, a day after President Biden joined the UAW picket line, on 27 September, Trump appeared at a rally held at a non-union factory in the Detroit region, pointing to employment risks caused by the EV transition (Gabriel, 2023; Tait, 2023). Although the UAW leadership repeatedly distanced itself from Trump through public statements, the gestures and messages by both presidential candidates undoubtedly increased the political significance of the strike.

Tentative agreements between UAW and the Detroit Three were reached at the end of October 2023 and were considered a major win for the union. The new master agreements included several gains for workers, the most obvious being wage increases (DiMaggio, 2023). In addition to winning back cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) for all members and securing an increase in the top wage rate of 30 per cent over the course of the four-year contract, workers in components plants on lower wages saw immediate increases of 50 to 90 per cent, while temporary workers experienced increases of up to 150 per cent. Also included in the agreement were specific investment guarantees for plants, such as the shift to the assembly of EV models or, for component plants, to the production of electric engines and other EV parts. The agreements also included a moratorium on plant closures, backed up by a right-to-strike provision. The UAW also won small improvements to retiree health care, supplemental unemployment benefits, and moving allowances for workers transferred between plants. ¹

Ratifying the new agreements required a majority approval from active union members at all three companies. Just over two-thirds at Stellantis and Ford and just over half at GM voted to ratify the agreement. According to interviewees, the workers who voted against the contract were concerned especially about retirement benefits, including retiree health care, and the retention of tiers in the benefits structure. Longstanding internal problems in the UAW were part of the problem, since UAWD members had not won elections at the local level, and the top elected leaders had experience within Ford and Stellantis but not General Motors.

Given the strong bargaining outcome, UAW leaders spoke of ‘momentum’ that could translate into further gains in bargaining and organising. However, since the strike, changes in the market and the emerging production overcapacities have reduced workers’ structural power. This has even made it difficult to enforce the contract’s investment provisions. After a pressure campaign by the union, Stellantis agreed to re-open the Belvidere plant – although not until 2027, four years into the life of the master agreement (Leon, 2024). The South Korean battery producer SK On withdrew from its joint venture with Ford in Kentucky, citing weak demand for EVs, shortly after workers at the plant voted to unionise with the UAW. The right to strike over plant closures is contingent on strong economic performance, and it is unclear when or whether promised investments will materialise. Since early 2025, new tariffs and the reversals of pro-EV policies under the second Donald Trump administration have added further uncertainty to the Detroit Three transition and production strategies. Combined with the ongoing slowdown in the EV market, the policy shifts have intensified cost pressures for firms and raised the precariousness of EV-related jobs (Dincer et al., 2025). On the other hand, it is still too early to assess whether the new trade barriers will lead to a stronger protection of domestic auto jobs, not least given unresolved questions concerning the level and the structure of the tariffs. In terms of the union’s associational gains, the UAW only succeeded in unionising one additional assembly plant (VW), before the upsurge of industrial action and organising subsided in 2025.

IG Metall strike at Volkswagen in 2024

The 2024 bargaining round between IG Metall and VW centred on negotiating a new collective agreement with the company. The negotiations began in September 2024, after both sides agreed to move them forward by one month. Unlike the other major car makers in Germany, VW has its own company-wide collective agreement with IG Metall (Haustarifvertrag; loosely tied to the sectoral metal industry agreement). Crucial to the talks in 2024 was that, prior to their start (and effective as of end of December 2024), the company unilaterally terminated several key elements of the collective agreement within its Haustarifvertrag framework – including a job security guarantee that had been in place since 1994 – and announced the possibility of domestic plant closures.

Two of our interviewees emphasised that the unilateral termination of the agreement in 2024 was preceded by the introduction of an internal company efficiency programme back in 2023 (named ‘Accelerate forward’). The programme imposed new cost-cutting goals and set an ambitious profitability target of 6.5 per cent. Back then, the company broadly pointed to large planned investments in the development of new technologies and vehicle models, plant modernisation, and staff training as the justification for cost-cutting (Volkswagen Group, 2023). While the measures introduced in 2023 had been accepted by the labour side, VW’s unilateral termination of collective agreements in September 2024 drew strong opposition. Some IG Metall representatives described the move in the media as a ‘declaration of war’ on the company’s workforce (Lohmann and Bischof, 2024), a sentiment echoed by our interviewees.

A high-ranking union official we interviewed emphasised that, in late 2024, IG Metall had strong reasons to believe the company was serious about closing domestic plants and laying off workers. A key factor behind this was domestic overcapacity, combined with a surprisingly slow growth of VW’s EV sales, both at home and abroad. Following the ‘Dieselgate’ scandal in 2015, the car maker had launched a far-reaching transition strategy towards EV production, while trying to maintain its previous product-market approach focused on relatively high-priced volume models (Lechowski and Weis, 2025). Since the early 2020s, the company rapidly expanded its EV-model portfolio and, in 2021, set a target for at least 70 per cent of its total European passenger car sales (roughly 1.5 million units) to be battery-electric by 2030. Around 2023, however, doubts about the feasibility of this plan had begun to emerge – driven, in particular, by the overall slowing domestic EV demand as well as by new competitive pressures from the increasingly capable Chinese producers.

At the time of the 2024 bargaining round, EV market trends and VW’s EV sales were negative in Germany (declining year‑on‑year). This was in contrast to 2019, when sales prospects were positive – and when IG Metall had secured significant concessions at VW’s Zwickau plant, duringits early shift to EV production, without even launching a strike. More specifically, the 2024 negotiations occurred against a backdrop of uncertain government support for the EV transition. In late 2023, the German Constitutional Court ruled illegal the large off-budget mechanism that had financed several key ‘green’ transition industrial programmes of the government. Following this, the then-ruling coalition of SPD, Greens, and FDP phased out the generous subsidy programme for buyers of new EVs. This, according to our interviews with the industry, fundamentally undermined hopes for a swift EV market uptake. Based on the data published by IEA (2025), between 2023 and 2024, EV sales in Germany dropped by about 25 per cent, from 520,000 to 380,000 units. Consequently, at the time of the negotiations, VW’s profitability was threatened by poor sales and overcapacity, and the company’s key shareholders – including the Porsche and Piëch families – became vocal in advocating domestic plant closures.

From September to December 2024, the company and IG Metall held multiple closed-door negotiations to hammer out a new collective agreement. The company took a tough stance and escalated pressure. In October 2024, VW again raised the possibility that several domestic production sites could be closed – which would be an unprecedented move in its history. Union representatives publicly stated that at least three plants were at risk and that thousands of domestic jobs could be cut. In addition, a list of the company’s critical demands – known during the negotiations as ‘Volkswagen’s poison list’ (Volkswagens Giftliste) – was revealed, including: a 10 per cent wage cut; the elimination of the collectively agreed allowance and annual bonus; and a significant reduction in company-wide trainee hiring commitments (VW-Flugblatt, 2024). For its part, the union also entered the talks with ambitious demands, including wage increases and stronger job security, and indicated some non-negotiable ‘red lines’ such as: no factory closures, no lay-offs, and no monthly income reductions. As the negotiations made little progress in the first weeks, in November 2024, the union called a strike – which was to begin when the statutory no-strike clause (Friedenspflicht, meaning ‘peace obligation’) expired on 1 December.

Like the UAW, IG Metall underwent a leadership change before the 2024 bargaining round. In October 2023, Christiane Benner became the first female chairperson in the union’s history, bringing with her prior experience as supervisory board member at several key German industrial companies under the co-determination law (e.g. BMW, Continental) and political ties to the then-ruling parliamentary coalition, being a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). However, by contrast to the UAW, the leadership change maintained continuity in the union’s bargaining strategy. Consequently, during the 2024 talks with VW, IG Metall’s approach was less confrontational compared to the UAW and avoided strong populist rhetoric. While some slogans criticising ‘corporate greed’ occasionally appeared during protests, IG Metall representatives kept emphasising the union’s shared responsibility for VW’s long-term viability and competitiveness.

Concerning the exact course and scope of the 2024 strike, IG Metall launched the action in early December and targeted the company’s nine domestic plants, both for car assembly and components (not involved was VW Osnabrück, which is covered by a separate agreement). The strike occurred in two waves. In the first step, two-hour warning strikes took place at the plants during each shift on 2 December. One week later, on 9 and 10 December, four-hour warning strikes were organised at the same plants, given limited progress in negotiations. In terms of participation, both events saw very strong member turnout – with approximately 100,000 workers joining the first event and about 70,000 the second one. As IG Metall emphasised in public statements, this was significantly more than in its previous major action against VW in 2018.

However, compared with the aggressive bargaining strategy of the UAW, the stoppages organised by IG Metall were only warning strikes (Warnstreiks) and were, therefore, very limited in scope and duration. While calling a full strike (Vollstreik) would have been legally possible for IG Metall, the union’s choice to limit the strike may also have reflected VW’s challenging situation in 2024. A full and prolonged strike could have severely disrupted the company’s ongoing transition and restructuring efforts – while IG Metall officials emphasised their sense of shared responsibility for the company’s long-term prospects.

Just days before the Christmas and New Year holidays, the car maker and the union signed an agreement to resolve the conflict. The document entitled ‘Future Volkswagen’ (Zukunft Volkswagen) was drafted during a 70-hour negotiating marathon at a Hanover hotel, formally amending VW’s Haustarifvertrag (Volkswagen Group, 2024, 2025). Unlike UAW members, IG Metall members did not directly vote to ratify the new contract, which is in line with German industrial relations practice. At the same time, our interviewees reported widespread member dissatisfaction, both with the union’s lack of transparent communication and the bargaining outcome itself.

With regard to the content of the agreement, the union has indeed managed to defend its ‘red lines’ announced at the outset (IG Metall, 2024), including the avoidance of domestic plant closures and lay-offs until 2031. The most important concessions made by the union included a far-reaching reduction in the domestic workforce, to be managed in a ‘socially responsible’ way (Volkswagen Group, 2025), and a significant reduction of production capacity at VW’s German plants. This would amount to the loss of a total of 35,000 jobs and reduced production capacity of around 700,000 vehicles by 2030 (Automotive Logistics, 2024). Furthermore, while the union claims to have ‘in essence’ prevented VW’s decoupling from the sector-level collective agreement of the metal industry (thereby, theoretically, maintaining wage benchmarking with the sector), sectorally agreed wage increases were effectively suspended until 2031. Finally, the agreement also scaled back vacation pay and bonuses (totalling a few thousand euros per worker annually) and extended working hours for several employee groups.

Discussion and conclusions: labour power in the green automotive transition

Above, we have shown two examples of how trade unions mobilise their power resources to shape the EV transition in the automotive industry, understood as a sector-specific case of a ‘green’ industrial transformation. At the Detroit Three in the United States and Volkswagen in Germany, the transition from ICEVs to EVs influenced corporate strategies and conflicts with labour over issues such as work and employment conditions, potential job cuts, and the geographic relocation of production. In both cases, the emerging corporate plans were far enough from the expectations of workers that the unions decided to launch strikes. Most importantly, however, the UAW was able to secure substantial gains – including very significant wage increases and improved employment conditions – while IG Metall accepted workforce reductions and other cost-cutting or flexibility-enhancing measures.

Although both cases involved collective bargaining over the EV transition at major auto makers, union approaches to collective action differed strongly. The UAW pursued a highly confrontational and militant approach – combining prolonged strikes, coordinated action across three key companies, and a strong anti-management rhetoric. Among other impacts, this strategy put significant economic pressure on the industry. By contrast, IG Metall in 2024 adopted a more constrained approach, which was shaped by co-determination principles and the legal limitations of short-term warning strikes (Warnstreiks). Relying less on inflammatory rhetoric, representatives of the German union more strongly emphasised responsibility for the company’s long-term competitiveness and economic viability.

The institutional differences between the two national industrial relations systems certainly mattered. The framing of the VW agreement in terms of securing the company’s future reflects the decades of IG Metall’s experience working in partnership with the car maker – while the militancy of the UAW reflects the discrediting of labour-management partnership and its collapse amid a corruption scandal. These differences also complicate any straightforward assessment of the ‘gains’ achieved by both unions. In particular, for IG Metall, such gains may include longer-term objectives related to firm-level stability and employment security that are difficult to assess at this stage. A further institutional difference concerns procedural arrangements: while UAW members could vote to select their national union leadership and ratify (or turn down) the tentative master agreement, at IG Metall, member voice was primarily through elected delegates. There were also some differences in the substance of what was bargained, such as the UAW’s achievement of a right to strike during the contract over plant closures and union organising rights at battery plants.

While the immediate and more visible success of the UAW can be in part attributed to the way the union mobilised its structural power in industrial action, our analysis indicates that this was itself conditioned by two rapidly evolving factors – product-market conditions and high-level political support for the EV transition.

First, our comparison revealed that the level of government support and political engagement was different in the two cases. At the time of the VW strike, the German government faced challenges in implementing its transformative automotive policy. Following the Constitutional Court decision in late 2023, the then-ruling coalition (SPD, Greens, FDP) had to secure new funding for several of its strategic industrial transformation programmes. However, the political parties could not come to an agreement about how to do this. This led to the early phase-out of the country’s EV buyer-subsidy programme and, in turn, the significant decline in domestic EV demand by early 2024. By contrast, in September 2023, the Biden Administration still actively promoted the EV shift in the US. The president implemented his industrial policies partly with an eye to winning the UAW’s electoral support in crucial swing states such as Michigan. It is noteworthy that the Biden administration set the tariffs on Chinese EVs at 100 per cent – much higher than the EU’s corresponding countervailing tariffs (which range from about 17 to over 35 per cent). The US Democratic candidate (Kamala Harris) ultimately lost to Trump, who rejected decarbonisation goals and eventually rolled back the Biden administration’s main EV-related policies. But the UAW strike ended before the new administration took power. Had bargaining taken place at the time of writing (early 2026), the process and outcome in the US could have been very different. Although the IG Metall strike against VW also took place in the context of coming parliamentary elections (early elections to Bundestag were about to take place in the first quarter of 2025), we did not observe a comparable level of politicisation of auto workers’ interests in the German case.

Second, the investment and employment plans of the companies were shaped by volatile product-market conditions. At the time of the strike in Germany, VW was struggling with weak demand for its vehicles, in particular EVs, in which it had invested heavily. This was conditioned by several factors – including the unexpected termination of government subsidies in the domestic market, as well as the overall relatively high price positions of VW’s electric cars. In addition to Germany, VW was also struggling in its other key EV market, China – because of the increasingly strong and cost-efficient local competition. While US producers had some of the same weaknesses, including exposure to the tight Chinese market, they were at a different stage in their EV transition trajectories in September 2023, when UAW launched its strike. Sales of ICEVs were robust in North America at the time, and the companies were building up their EV production capacities. The timing of the two strikes relative to the product-market developments and company strategies had a decisive impact on their outcomes. IG Metall had reason to take VW’s plant closure threats seriously, not just because of product-market trends, but also due to open calls from some major shareholders to disinvest in Germany.

To conclude, our case studies demonstrated how labour’s structural power is volatile and context-dependent, reflecting not only institutional differences, but also the dynamics of market trends and political support. Considering more specifically the EV transition as a case of ‘green’ industrial transformation, the UAW bargaining episode highlighted how adversarial and militant union strategy can indeed effectively apply structural power to achieve concrete labour gains under favorable market and political conditions of sectoral restructuring. By contrast, the IG Metall case illustrates how unions’ bargaining leverage can be constrained (or even self-constrained) under conditions of more uncertain commercial and political prospects of the ‘green’ automotive transition.