We Won't Produce Death

Three VW workers speak about their initiative against the introduction of weapons manufacturing at VW.

Here is the text of their appeal:

Will the automotive industry at VW soon be converted into a defence industry too? The Greens, SPD and CDU have agreed on a special fund. This special fund cannot be financed by a few cuts to the basic income: reductions in pensions, the abolition of a public holiday, an increase in VAT – the ideas for cuts know no bounds except that the wealthy are exempt from funding the arms industry. A gold-rush mentality is taking hold among those in power and their lackeys, and they have deadly ideas about what should happen to our money. After all, there is money to be made from it. Does it make sense to continue arming ourselves in a nuclear world where armaments make it possible to destroy all life on this planet in just seven minutes? For Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger and Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume, the answer is yes, because here, profits on an unimaginable scale can be made at the expense of the population.

Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume wants to assign military tasks to the group, the manager said at the latest investor conference (Auto, Motor Sport, 13 March 2025). Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger has described the VW plant in Osnabrück as “well suited” for the production of armaments. Previously, VW CEO Oliver Blume had expressed openness to repurposing the plant (NDR, 14 March 2025).

Arms production as the ultimate redistribution machinery

A special fund for military equipment has no practical use. At best, the military equipment just sits around until it rots. At worst, it brings destruction and death. Just think of the wonderful things we could achieve with the special military fund! Pensions that everyone can live on, good healthcare, shorter working hours with full pay, a sensible shift in production towards products that benefit everyone, such as the expansion of public transport.

The powerful and the warmongers sit safely in their high-security villas, watching war as if it were a Netflix series or a football match from a safe distance, and making unimaginable amounts of money from it. It is others who are supposed to die, in the fight for rare earths and other raw materials. China and Russia on one side, us on the other.

Will weapons soon be produced at VW to kill the VW workers from the former Kaluga plant in Russia, or are the weapons being prepared to kill our colleagues in China? We don’t know. But what we do know is this: the rulers and the wealthy don’t care, as long as there’s profit to be made. Who decides whether we will soon be producing death at VW? Certainly not us, the workforce. And that is precisely where the problem lies. In Paragraph 2 of the IG Metall constitution, socialisation was enshrined as a goal after the Second World War. One reason for this is that we ourselves should decide what is produced and under what conditions. Current developments make it clear that the socialisation of workplaces is not a task for the future, but a task for the present, if we do not want to end up in an apocalypse.

We, the VW workers, call on everyone: resist arms production and death. Our Mother Earth and our homeland are international!

Konstantin Antjuschin, VW worker, Kassel; Hidir Budak, VW worker, Kassel; Michael Stephan Werner, VW worker, Wolfsburg; Sven Schramm, Sachsen GmbH Gläserne Manufaktur; Thorsten Donnermeier, VW worker, Kassel; Nikolaj Graf, VW worker, Kassel; Lars Hirsekorn, Braunschweig