VW to shed jobs in Europe, report says

December 15, 2015 at 12:06 p.m. | Updated December 15, 2015 at 12:08 p.m.

by Wire Service

FILE - In this Sept. 29, 2015, file photo, people leave Volkswagen car factory in Wolfsburg, Germany. More than a decade ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency helped develop a technology that ultimately allowed an independent laboratory to catch Volkswagen’s elaborate cheating on car emissions tests. But EPA did not apply that technology on its own tests of diesel passenger cars and instead focused on trucks, thus missing its best chance to foil the German carmaker’s deception as early as 2007. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)
FILE - In this Sept. 29, 2015, file photo, people leave Volkswagen car factory in Wolfsburg, Germany. More than a decade ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency helped develop a technology that ultimately allowed an independent laboratory to catch Volkswagen’s elaborate cheating on car emissions tests. But EPA did not apply that technology on its own tests of diesel passenger cars and instead focused on trucks, thus missing its best chance to foil the German carmaker’s deception as early as 2007. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

Volkswagen will shed about 600 temporary workers at a factory in Zwickau, Germany, next year as it battles to cope with the fallout from its cheating of diesel emissions tests, Reuters reported today that labor representatives at the carmaker said.

Europe's largest automaker is cutting spending on factories, equipment and models to curb multi-billion-euro costs from a scandal centrring on up to 11 million diesel vehicles that contain software capable of deceiving regulators about the true level of their toxic emissions.

The Zwickau plant, the fifth largest of VW's 10 Germany-based factories where 8,800 staff assemble the Golf and Passat models, will face idling because of a mandatory holiday in 2016 and plans by management to cut the Phaeton saloon, whose body shell is also built at the site, to only an electric version.

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