A Speech Against War

at the works meeting of VW Braunschweig

Lars Hirsekorn, member of the Works Council of VW in Braunschweig, called on thousands of colleagues at the staff meeting on the 2nd of September 2025 to ‘learn quickly’ and to counter the preparations for war in the country. This was what he said:

‘Saturday daddy belongs to me’, we hardly ever talk about this demand against weekend shifts from 1956 anymore.

When the states of real existing socialism in Eastern Europe collapsed, the shareholders very quickly recognised the potential for blackmail. ‘Either you work regularly at weekends again, or we'll move production to Eastern Europe’. With this increased flexibility of our labour time and the extension of machine running times, the large profits of Piech, Porsche and Co. were not only to be secured, but also increased.

And we gave in. After this blackmail at the latest, we should really have started travelling to Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary twice a year, with a bus full of colleagues, to visit local car workers and start a joint debate with them. That's the only way we can formulate common demands and stop undercutting each other.

What have we done? - We agreed to work on Saturdays and backed national production.

And that wasn't just the case at VW. Whether BMW, Daimler or Opel, we sold off our weekend throughout the German automotive industry in the early 1990s.

At the beginning of the 2000s, profits were once again not high enough. ‘We want to outsource logistics, the kitchen and assembly,’ the shareholders shouted. ‘Either you agree or we move everything to Eastern Europe.’

And what about us? We backed national production and watched a whole section of production being outsourced at low rates.

Of course we have a European and Global Works Council, but that's no substitute for direct dialogue between workers. Colleagues need to get to know each other and talk and celebrate together. Only then will a competitor really become a colleague.

Have we learnt anything from this? No, we haven't learnt from it! We have accepted the situation as a given. Year after year, we shout at each other as trade unionists in various commissions because our outsourced colleagues at Group Services rightly can't and don't want to live on their low wages and we don't know how to change it.

And 2024? Once again, profits weren't high enough for the shareholders. And again came the old refrain: ‘Either you extend working hours and forgo wages or we close the plants and relocate the work to Eastern Europe’

And now? We have given up our wages, extended our working hours and our applications for educational leave are now being processed in Poland.

We have to learn, dear colleagues. We must fucking learn.

The global automotive industry markets are saturated. Whether in China, Europe or the USA, hundreds of thousands of cars are sitting unsold everywhere, threatening shareholders' dividends. For years now, the Piech, Porsche, Quandt and Musk families have no clue how to invest their billions profitably. The last anchor were investments in nonsense like Bitcoin: just think about it. I let my computer do 10,000 hours of pointless processing and sell you the result for €10,000. We're in such a miserable situation that billionaires are investing in such rubbish.

And now they have discovered a new investment opportunity, a commodity that constantly needs to be produced anew and whose market is insatiable if the worst comes to the worst. The Porsche family wants to produce weapons again because it's profitable, dear colleagues. Not because they want to defend democracy in their factories or because they are concerned about the welfare of their workers, no, dear colleagues, it shall be worthwhile, there shall be profit made from it.

That's why they want to produce weapons in Osnabrück and elsewhere.

We have to learn - dear colleagues, we must learn!

In 1914, the world was divided up, the colonies were given away, steel was plentiful and the big capitalists of this world no longer knew how to increase their money. Whether in Germany, Austria/Hungary, Russia, England, France or Australia, everywhere they invested in armaments to redistribute the divided world and make new profits.

And what about us? The German Social Democrats agreed to the war credits, the trade unions renounced wage demands and strikes in the so-called ‘Burgfrieden’ truce. Working hours were subordinated to the necessity of war. The working people sent their children off to war with cheers, they invest their savings and even their wedding rings in war credits, and the few who speak out loudly against the war are insulted as journeymen without a fatherland. They are insulted, thrown into prison or sent to the front.

People had to learn first!

In the summer of 1916, the first so-called hunger strikes took place in Braunschweig. But they did not have much effect. Then, in January 1918, there was a strike in armaments production throughout the German Reich. Around 1 million colleagues stopped work for a good 10 days and demanded peace and bread. However, the strikes were crushed and many thousands of the striking armaments workers were sent to the front in punishment. They paid for their fight for peace with death. But they were also the spark that ignited a process of rethinking in large sections of the population. They sowed the realisation that working people gain nothing from war except misery and death.

I join their ranks with optimism.

Dear colleagues, we live in a society that is single-mindedly heading towards another great war. Many will say that this is a entirely different situation, but I believe it isn't. Even today, it is not about human dignity or democracy. Neither in Ukraine, the Congo or Palestine! It's about raw materials, profit and power.

After the First World War, you would have thought that humanity would have learnt from it, but unfortunately our memories are often very short.

I don't see any friend or foe in these wars.

Which worker emerged victorious from the First World War?

What do the millions of graves around the world tell us?

The shareholders will not sacrifice their children on the battlefield. They run businesses that are vital to the war effort and will certainly be indispensable.

And we will pay for the special armaments fund, as the war credits are called today, not Musk, not Porsche, not Thyssen-Krupp.

Today, unfortunately, there are once again voices in our trade unions, but also among the workforce, who support the war credits and are happy about the well-paid jobs in the armaments industry.

We must learn, dear colleagues. We must learn quickly.

Because otherwise we will pay again with the blood of our children and the graveyards will grow.