German states urge VW not to close automobile manufacturing plants

Four German states are urging ailing carmaker Volkswagen not to close automobile manufacturing plants in the country.

In joint position paper, the economy ministers of Lower Saxony, Saxony, Hesse and Berlin said their top goal is to maintain all manufacturing sites.

"This means that the individual sites will not be played off against each other," the ministers said in the position paper dated October 10 and which surfaced on Monday.

The state ministers also reject "harsh cuts" at the expense of employees.

In the future, a new, long-term contract to secure employment must ensure that jobs are protected and expertise is retained, the ministers said.

"Expertise that is lost once generally remains lost or can only be restored at great expense," Olaf Lies of Lower Saxony, Martin Dulig of Saxony, Kaweh Mansoori of Hesse and Franziska Giffey of Berlin warned.

The Volkswagen brand employs around 120,000 people in Germany, more than 100,000 of whom work in Lower Saxony.

Volkswagen has terminated its decades-old job security agreement with the trade unions in Germany. Plant closures and redundancies are being discussed.

The abrupt discontinuation of subsidies for electric cars last year caused demand for battery-powered cars in Germany to collapse.

For manufacturers, this means that their plants are currently not running at full capacity.

The economy ministers of the four states are also promoting new purchase incentives to give the German automotive industry a boost.