*

Redundancies possible at six plants from June 2025

*

"We must enable Volkswagen to reduce costs," executive

says

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Works council vows resistance

*

VW open to bringing talks with unions forward

(Adds statements from Volkswagen, works council in paragraphs

4-6, 10-13)

By Victoria Waldersee

FRANKFURT, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Volkswagen

said on Tuesday it was scrapping a range of labour agreements

including a guarantee of jobs until 2029 at six German plants,

raising the prospect of redundancies from next year that worker

representatives have vowed to resist.

Europe's top carmaker is cancelling the decades-old

employment guarantees as part of a cost-cutting drive that has

triggered a showdown with workers as Volkswagen struggles to

compete against cheaper Asian rivals.

Volkswagen's move follows a threat that it could shut plants

on German soil for the first time in its 87-year history, which

sent shockwaves through the global autos sector and prompted

high-level German government concern.

"We must enable Volkswagen AG to reduce costs in Germany to

a competitive level in order to invest in new technologies and

new products with our own resources," the company's Labour

Director Gunnar Kilian said in a statement.

In a bid to counteract uncertainty around labour agreements,

Kilian said Volkswagen was offering to bring forward wage

negotiations.

Such talks were due to start in mid- to late October, with

strikes possible from the end of November, but the works council

has called for the talks to start this month.

The head of the company's works council has promised fierce

resistance against lay-offs and factory closures, blaming

management for Volkswagen's ills.

The IG Metall union had previously said it could consider

moving to a four-day week as an alternative to closures -

replicating an earlier cost-cutting drive in the 1990s.

Volkswagen's troubles come at a time of economic

uncertainty, with weak growth, higher energy prices and

questions over trade ties with the lucrative Chinese market

testing Germany's model for consensual industrial relations.

If the two parties do not reach an agreement by next June,

labour agreements in place prior to 1994 will come into force -

which, in what works council chief Daniela Cavallo described in

a statement for workers as a "crazy-sounding consequence" -

would result in a pay rise for staff at the six plants.

Additional pay components in the labour agreement before

1994 included a Christmas bonus, additional holiday pay, and

higher bonuses for overtime, according to an article published

in the works council's internal newspaper.

However, layoffs for operational reasons would also be

possible for the first time in decades.

"A negotiated compromise is actually needed. Otherwise, VW

will be able to push ahead with forced redundancies from summer

2025, but at the same time would immediately face enormous cost

increases for all those who remain," the works council said in

its article.

(Reporting by Victoria Waldersee, Writing by Matthias Williams;

Editing by Miranda Murray, Alexander Smith and Emelia

Sithole-Matarise)