It speaks volumes about the corporate media that to better understand antisemitism, growing wage disparity and labor unrest, and the declining state of the global automotive industry, I’m increasingly drawn to the World Socialist Web Site. The corporate media covers politics and business through the prism of its business owners—that’s why it’s called the corporate media. WSWS views the world through the lens of increasingly oppressed working-class people.
I doubt that even WSWS’s editors would profess to be objective. Their stories drool with rabid anti-Israel venom that crosses into antisemitism. Reading the publication has deepened my appreciation that labor unions will help fuel rising Jew hatred, particularly as they increasingly align themselves with politicians and causes hostile to Israel.
I’m Jewish and an Israel supporter, and I consider it wise to heed the proverb, “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”
WSWS was among the first publications to pounce on German publication Manager Magazin’s bombshell scoop that VW Group is looking to slash 100,000 jobs, twice as many as previously planned. According to the publication, VW intends to close company plants in Hanover, Zwickau and Emden, as well as the Audi plant in Neckarsulm, which together employ 40,000 people, and to break up the Group in its present form.
WSWS put the potential layoffs in its characteristically apocalyptic perspective.
“There has not been a comparable wave of job cuts since the Great Depression of the 1930s, which led directly to the Nazi dictatorship and the Second World War. This must not be allowed to happen under any circumstances,” WSWS thundered.
As the video below confirms, global economic experts agree that VW’s plans represent another major blow to Germany’s deteriorating economy and increasingly uncompetitive manufacturing sector, hampered by a poorly planned acceleration to green energy.
VW’s planned reduction of 100,000 jobs represents roughly one-third of its domestic workforce. By comparison, when GM filed for bankruptcy in 2009, it employed fewer than 90,000 workers in the United States.
A VW spokesperson declined to comment to Reuters, citing “confidential documents,” but noted the entire group, including its brands and subsidiaries, “must undergo far-reaching change.”
GM and Ford face many of the same challenges that drove VW’s leadership to embrace drastic measures. Perhaps even more noteworthy is that Boston Consulting Group reportedly played a role in VW’s restructuring deliberations. BCG’s fingerprints can also be found on the aggressive EV transformation that swept through GM and Ford—and on Ford’s controversial 2019 workforce downsizing. BCG was among the loudest proponents of an accelerated EV future; some of the firm’s research papers haven’t aged well.
The full extent of BCG’s influence inside Volkswagen isn’t publicly known, but the consulting firm’s relationship with the automaker appears to stretch back years.
Following Volkswagen’s catastrophic 2015 emissions scandal, Volkswagen turned to Boston Consulting Group to help overhaul its governance and compliance systems. Working alongside Hiltrud Werner, VW’s Group Director of Integrity and Legal Affairs, Katharina Hefter, who leads BCG’s Risk & Compliance practice in Central Europe and specializes in large-scale transformation and change, helped redesign the automaker’s internal monitoring, audit systems, and corporate compliance structure during its years under independent oversight.
The justification for VW’s restructuring reportedly came after VW retained BCG to conduct anonymous “belief audits” of members of the Executive Board, Supervisory Board, trade union, and works council to assess the state of the company and formulate radical strategic measures. Six of the nine executive board members BCG surveyed assessed Volkswagen Group as being “at risk of collapse.” The remaining three classified the situation as “risky.”
It’s both telling and alarming that most of VW’s top executives reportedly believed the company was in dire straits but were willing to say so only under the cloak of anonymity. Perhaps corporate governance works differently in Europe, but executives and directors in the U.S. aren’t entrusted with stewardship so they can privately diagnose existential threats. They’re expected to confront them.
According to WSWS, citing Manager Magazin, Group CEO Oliver Blume’s 180-page “transformation paper” presented to the Supervisory Board was developed in direct cooperation with Boston Consulting Group.
It would be helpful to know how BCG framed its “belief audits.” It’s no secret that managements often retain consulting firms to validate strategies they already favor.
Most people understand the importance of getting a second opinion before undergoing major surgery. Perhaps boards contemplating radical corporate surgery should do the same. They just shouldn’t seek that second opinion from another consulting firm hoping to perform the operation.
Helping orchestrate a massive 100,000-job-cut restructuring would make Christmas come early at BCG, regardless of the time of year.
BCG’s fingerprints also surfaced in Ford’s controversial workforce downsizing. Documents made public in a 2021 age discrimination lawsuit alleged that Ford hired Boston Consulting Group in 2019 to identify employees whose exit would provide the greatest cost savings, and that the consultants utilized an algorithm that included employee birthdates and the number of years employees had worked at the company.
“It’s statistically impossible these cuts were made by chance,” Michigan attorney Megan Bonanni, who settled previous Ford age discrimination cases, told the Detroit Free Press. “Numbers don’t lie.”
A Ford spokesman told the Free Press that “the allegations in these [age discrimination] cases are baseless” and “we’re vigorously challenging them.”
Months later, the Free Press reported that Ford had settled the case, of course without admitting any wrongdoing.
BCG has also largely escaped scrutiny for another influential role—helping convince the automotive industry that the EV transformation was unfolding faster than even the firm’s most bullish forecasts.
In April 2021, five BCG consultants issued a report breathlessly predicting that 47% of all light vehicles sold globally in 2025 would be fully electric or hybrids. They insisted the EV transformation was unfolding faster than they had ever imagined.
“The electrification of the global automotive market has made significant progress over the past decade, at a speed which has surpassed even the most bullish forecasts,” four wise BCG men and a woman gushed.
“Still, to achieve the overarching objective of mitigating climate change, policymakers and the automotive industry not only must accelerate the market penetration of EVs. They must also move faster to undo the damage being done by getting older gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles off the roads more quickly. The stakes couldn’t be higher—not just for automakers, but for the planet itself.”
By September of last year, BCG had adopted a far less sanguine tone, acknowledging that the global EV market had become “splintered.”
BCG and its defenders might argue that their aggressive forecasts were predicated on an unyielding regulatory mandate and an endless consumer willingness to transition. Yet Toyota’s management correctly predicted that Americans weren’t ready to embrace pure battery-electric vehicles en masse, choosing instead to double down on hybrids.
In an irony few corporate auto journalists have properly framed, Toyota’s supposedly backward strategy proved remarkably prescient. Today, hybrids are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. automotive industry.
GM CEO Mary Barra’s EV prognostications and aggressive EV targets closely mirrored those of BCG, but as great minds reputedly think alike, perhaps that was just a coincidence. Nevertheless, it’s known that some of BCG’s consultant pixie dust found its way into the executive suite of General Motors.
In July 2023, GM announced that it had hired Norm de Greve as its chief marketing officer, with President Mark Reuss declaring de Greve “the perfect fit as we continue our technology-driven transformation.” As part of this marketing tech overhaul, de Greve worked with BCG and Microsoft “to harness AI-driven targeting and measurement, turning a clearer customer focus into stronger marketing performance.”
GM stripped de Greve of his marketing responsibilities shortly after his second anniversary, and he left the company six months later.
So far this year, GM’s promised AI-driven marketing transformation doesn’t appear to be producing the sort of sales performance that would please GM CFO Paul Jacobson.
While U.S. new car sales remained strong in the first half of this year, Cox Automotive predicts that GM will report a 7.2% year-over-year sales decline. Cox expects that all GM brands will post declines, led by Buick and Cadillac, each down more than 20% for the first half, resulting in a modest loss of market share.
BCG’s fingerprints didn’t suddenly appear when Volkswagen began contemplating 100,000 job cuts. By 2021, the consulting firm was helping shape the conversation around electrification. BCG published a study in Germany arguing there was little difference in the personnel and labor required to build an electric vehicle versus one powered by an internal combustion engine—a reassuring message for Volkswagen’s powerful unions at a time when fears of job losses threatened to slow the company’s EV ambitions.
Given BCG’s recent track record, care to guess how the consulting firm’s business is doing these days?
Couldn’t be better, according to Christoph Schweizer, BCG’s German CEO, who recently crowed to the Wall Street Journal. Revenue at BCG rose 7% to $14.4 billion in the firm’s latest fiscal year, and its head count is expanding as the firm rushes to meet a near “infinite need” from companies for help rolling out AI.
On its biggest AI projects, BCG is getting paid differently, with more work dependent on achieving certain goals for the client, such as lower costs or higher revenue growth.
Helping a legacy automotive giant restructure its operations and eliminate 100,000 jobs could prove another lucrative engagement.
If I represented Volkswagen’s union members, my first order of business would be examining BCG’s long-standing role inside the automaker and measuring the consulting firm’s advice against the results. Based on its public record, BCG has more to explain than celebrate.