Close to zero progress in electrifying European produced cars. I would say unions are the cause for the delay resisting any change away from skills their members have, but obsoleted by electric cars with 1/10 the number of parts required.
VW group has twice the EVs in pipeline than Tesla. Sales are probably gonna overtake Tesla this or next year. They are not as fun as Teslas but they are solid products that people seem to prefer over fart mode that cost them extra $10k.
On what evidence do you say that? The German auto unions have been saying for years that the switch to electric needs to be planned and managed exactly so the sector remains competitive and can employ people
>VW, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche all German engineered and manufactured by heavily unionized workforces!
Sure, but for each of those there are 10-100 other smaller companies in automotive or other industries that don't have unions, and some German companies have stirred up quite a few scandals of not following the employment laws or abusing their workforce, which coincidentally was mostly immigrants.
Cherry picking the big, wealthy car brands to represent the manufacturing industry is like cherry picking FAANG for representing the software dev industry.
I didn't say unions are not successful, I said that workplaces like VW or Porsche are not the norm in Germany. They're like Germany's FAANG; very successful, but not the norm for every industry employee there since they don't all enjoy such good conditions.
I had a friend from France getting his undergraduate degree in the US Marvel at how much learning we were getting done, since we didnt spend half of every semester on strike.
There are good and bad unions everywhere, but I think the closed-shop restrictions in the US that force you to join a particular union as a condition of employment exacerbates the worst qualities of them here.
I don't know why you claim that smaller companies in the automotive sector in Germany don't have ununionzed workforces, but the IG Metall has a »Organisationsgrad« in this sector (how many of the workers are union members) above 90 percent (see https://www.wiwo.de/politik/deutschland/gewerkschaften-die-u...).
It's likely not as bad as in France, but in a shifting economy, German unions are still hurting the manufacturers. Just last year they got the CEO of Volkswagen fired for wanting to invest massively in electric cars. Workers specialized in ICE drivetrains can't have that. Much easier to block the innovation at board level than to retrain. That will go on until somehow union dominance is overcome or the companies are dead in the water against new competitors.
I've never heard of these people being lazy, not wanting to work etc.
In fact German engineering is the envy of the world!
VW, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche all German engineered and manufactured by heavily unionized workforces!
Sounds like your anecdotal bad experience with unions is not representative of reality.
And FWIW I can list you just as many terrible anecdotes about how awful business managers are...