Braunschweig Bernd Osterloh actually works in Munich now. Since May he has been Chief Human Resources Officer at Traton, the truck subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group. But on Monday, Osterloh caught up with his own past as a powerful VW works council chairman.
The 65-year-old had to testify as a witness in court. A criminal case against the two former Volkswagen HR directors Horst Neumann and Karlheinz Blessing and two other former VW HR managers has been going on in Braunschweig for two weeks. The public prosecutor’s office in Braunschweig accuses them of infidelity. For many years they would have given a number of works councils too high salaries, probably to buy the goodwill of the employee representatives. The damage amounts to a good five million euros, the prosecutors write in their indictment.
From the point of view of the criminal investigators, Osterloh plays a crucial role in this process. That is why he was summoned to this criminal trial on Monday morning as one of the most important witnesses. The former head of the works council is not one of the defendants.
However, the process is not entirely without risk for the current Traton board of directors. He is being investigated for possible aid to infidelity. But first the public prosecutors want to bring the proceedings against the main culprits to an end – and from their point of view these are the four former accused VW managers.
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As head of the works council, Osterloh has earned millions over the years. In peak years with high success bonuses, he received more than 700,000 euros a year. Significantly more than what a worker earns on the assembly line at Volkswagen, and roughly what top managers below the board of management usually bring home with them.
The public prosecutor’s office based their indictment on a salary comparison with the VW employees with whom Osterloh started his career at the Wolfsburg-based car manufacturer more than 40 years ago. At that time he was working in vehicle production, as a so-called “complaint handler”. Osterloh made sure that the last flaws in brand new cars were eliminated and that they reached the customers fully functional.
Osterloh’s completely different point of view
According to the Braunschweig public prosecutors in their indictment, the salary of a works council should not grow immeasurably. Salary increases would have to be based on what a works council would probably have achieved in terms of wage increases at its last regular job. In the case of Bernd Osterloh, the annual salary should hardly have exceeded 100,000 euros.
When he was questioned by the Braunschweig criminal chamber, Bernd Osterloh saw it completely differently. His appearance in court lasted a good hour. He meticulously described his career as a bandworker to the top of the employee representative body. As the highest group works council, he met with the Federal Chancellor, the Prime Minister and, as a matter of course, regularly with the Porsche Piëch family, which as the most important owner holds around 53 percent of the VW voting rights. A world that only had to do with everyday life on the production line to a very limited extent.
Osterloh management positions have been offered repeatedly in the group. First he was to become VW HR manager for Germany, and later even to take over the entire HR department on the group’s board of directors. Public prosecutor Sonja Walther expressed doubts that these were serious offers. There was no written evidence that these job offers actually existed.
Idea of the chairman of the supervisory board, Ferdinand Piëch
Bernd Osterloh rejected this assumption. “The offers were clear. I just had to say yes, then that would have been implemented, ”he said in court. The idea of making him a member of the executive board was first brought up by the then chairman of the supervisory board, Ferdinand Piëch. In 2015 he could have changed. But because of the emerging diesel affair, he decided to stay on the employee side in order to protect the workforce from the threat of burdens from the affair.
The court under its chairman Bohle Behrendt seemed to believe Bernd Osterloh’s statements. This is extremely important for the outcome of the proceedings: If Bernd Osterloh is compared with board members and managers in his salary development and no longer with his former colleagues from band days, the charges against the four VW managers are unlikely to be tenable. Especially since Osterloh has actually become a member of the board with his move to Traton.
A total of eleven trial days were set aside for the entire procedure. The verdict is currently planned for the end of October.
More: VW draws a line under labor law and comes to an agreement in an overly high salary affair with 15 works councils in court