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FINANCE

VW puts workers on part-time after dispute with supplier

Volkswagen said Thursday production at several factories has been severely disrupted due to a shortage of components, a new headache for the German car giant that is still grappling with a massive pollution cheating scandal.

VW puts workers on part-time after dispute with supplier
Photo: DPA

Work at the several factories, including at its largest facility in Wolfsburg, has been hit. At a factory in Emden, 7,200 workers have been put on part time due to missing parts.

“A Volkswagen supplier has suspended contractually agreed deliveries of components,” the company told AFP. “This has led to bottlenecks in production.”

The auto giant said it obtained a court injunction last week to compel the supplier to resume deliveries, but that has “not been complied with”.

“Since we can't currently foresee how things will develop, we're examining making working times flexible in parts of our Wolfsburg site,” added the company, which did not name the supplier.

But German news agency DPA said there were in fact two suppliers that had disrupted their deliveries – one that makes textiles and leather for car interiors and another that specialises in cast parts for gearboxes.

“This is more than just annoying,” works council member Guido Mehlhop told DPA, “especially when you know that the court already issued an injunction last week requiring the suppliers to deliver the parts as contractually agreed.”

“Apparently someone is trying to stage a cliff-hanger on the backs of the workers,” he went on, calling for a solution “as quickly as possible.”

A court spokesman said that the auto giant has a month to appeal to a higher court.

Volkswagen has been battling to get past its biggest crisis, which erupted last September after it was forced to admit that it had installed sophisticated software into 11 million diesel engines with the express purpose of duping emissions tests.

The shock revelation led to a 40-percent plunge in the company's share price last autumn, wiping out some €25 billion in market capitalisation in two days.

VW shares were down 0.45 percent In early trading in Frankfurt Thursday.

Germany's consumer association chief Klause Mueller Thursday stepped up calls for the company to offer compensation to affected customers in Germany, as it has promised to do in the United States.

“Anyone who defrauded their customers like Volkswagen did should provide damages,” he told regional newspaper Rheinische Post.

Volkswagen last month obtained preliminary approval from a California judge for a $14.7 billion (€13 billion) settlement over the scandal.

The settlement includes $10 billion for compensation to affected car owners. In addition, the group will create a $2.7 billion fund for environmental remediation, and provide $2 billion to promote the use of “zero emissions” vehicles within the United States.

 

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POLLUTION

Greenpeace sounds alarm over Spain’s ‘poisonous mega farms’

The “uncontrolled” growth of industrial farming of livestock and poultry in Spain is causing water pollution from nitrates to soar, Greenpeace warned in a new report on Thursday.

Greenpeace sounds alarm over Spain's 'poisonous mega farms'
Pollution from hundreds of intensive pig farms played a major role in the collapse of Murcia Mar Menor saltwater lagoon. Photo: JOSEP LAGO / AFP

The number of farm animals raised in Spain has jumped by more than a third since 2015 to around 560 million in 2020, it said in the report entitled “Mega farms, poison for rural Spain”.

This “excessive and uncontrolled expansion of industrial animal farming” has had a “serious impact on water pollution from nitrates”, it said.

Three-quarters of Spain’s water tables have seen pollution from nitrates increase between 2016 and 2019, the report said citing Spanish government figures.

Nearly 29 percent of the country’s water tables had more than the amount of nitrate considered safe for drinking, according to a survey carried out by Greenpeace across Spain between April and September.

The environmental group said the government was not doing enough.

It pointed out that the amount of land deemed an “area vulnerable to nitrates” has risen to 12 million hectares in 2021, or 24 percent of Spain’s land mass, from around eight million hectares a decade ago, yet industrial farming has continued to grow.

“It is paradoxical to declare more and more areas vulnerable to nitrates”, but at the same time allow a “disproportionate rise” in the number of livestock on farms, Greenpeace said.

Pollution from hundreds of intensive pig farms played a major role in the collapse of one of Europe’s largest saltwater lagoons, the Mar Menor in Spain’s southeast, according to a media investigation published earlier this week.

Scientists blamed decades of nitrate-laden runoffs for triggering vast blooms of algae that had depleted the water of the lagoon of oxygen, leaving fish suffocating underwater.

Two environmental groups submitted a formal complaint in early October to the European Union over Spain’s failure to protect the lagoon.

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