You are Nora Albrecht, 51, director of Rheinwerk Components' Düsseldorf plant. It is 6:40 on a Monday, six hundred people are standing on the assembly-hall floor, and the works-council chair refuses to talk to you. Before you walk down to the hall, you have to decide what he is really fighting for.
The situation
Rheinwerk, headquartered in Cologne, makes braking and thermal-management systems for three European carmakers: €880 million of revenue, a 9% operating margin and 3,400 employees in two plants. Düsseldorf is the larger: 1,250 people and €410 million of output. As in any German company of its size, there is a works council with real standing and a union presence. And until this morning, 22 years without a single day of industrial action.
Overnight, a group memo leaked to the night shift: a €22 million cost reduction that includes moving one production line to a cheaper site. The plan was drafted at headquarters, above you, and so was the decision to keep the works council out. Werner Kessler, who chairs the council and has 28 years at the plant, found out like everyone else. He is now at the hall's north doors with some two hundred workers around him; the group's second plant has let it be known that its council is watching, and there are press photographers at the gate.
The stopped line costs about €95,000 an hour. Two customers run just-in-time with at most six hours of buffer, and the largest has warned that a stoppage beyond 18 hours opens a formal supplier review and a €1.4 million penalty. The shift handover is at 14:00.