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      Volkswagen Profit Shrinks as Unions Threaten Strike

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      Germany’s biggest automaker said its profit dropped 42 percent in the third quarter, as union leaders warned that workers were ready to walk out over a wage dispute.Volkswagen reported a 42 percent drop in quarterly profit on Wednesday, while emphasizing an “urgent need” to cut costs and gain efficiency in a challenging marketplace as it considers plant closures and layoffs in Germany.The automaker’s negotiator pointed to the company’s weak earnings ahead of his meeting with union leaders, who warned of imminent strikes if a solution to cut costs and restructure the brand was not found.The Volkswagen Group, which owns 10 brands, including Audi and Porsche, is Germany’s largest industrial employer, with 120,000 people working for its eponymous core brand. The country’s vision of itself as an economic powerhouse and automotive giant is also deeply intertwined with Volkswagen, and local economies across the country depend on the company and its well-paid workers.Representatives from the automaker and IG Metall, the union representing most of its workers, convened for a second round of wage negotiations on Wednesday in a conference room in the Volkswagen Arena, the stadium of the company’s professional soccer team, VfL Wolfsburg.Before the talks, Volkswagen reported that profit fell to 2.86 billion euros, or $3.1 billion, for the months of August to September, its lowest level in three years. The company is struggling against falling demand in China, the world’s largest car market, and high costs, especially in its homeland, Germany.“The situation is getting worse,” Arne Meiswinkel, the chief of personnel at Volkswagen, who is leading negotiations for the company, told reporters before the negotiations began.But union leaders insisted that a guarantee by the company that all 10 of its factories in Germany would remain open was a prerequisite for them to stay at the negotiating table. The union is prevented from staging any strikes until the end of November, but leaders said that they would begin preparing walkouts unless their demand was met.“We expect Volkswagen to declare its willingness to enter into negotiations with us on a viable future concept for all sites,” Thorsten Gröger, chief negotiator of IG Metall union, told reporters ahead of the talks.“Otherwise, I say quite clearly, we will have to plan the further escalation with our negotiating and bargaining committee,” he said.On Monday, the company’s top employee representative said that management had informed the works council that it was considering shutting down as many as three factories in Germany and laying off tens of thousands of workers. The closures would be the first in the 87-year history of the company and would be a further blow to Germany’s stagnant economy. More

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      Boeing Will Sell $19 Billion in Stock Amid Costly Strike

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      The aerospace company, locked in a standoff with striking workers, is seeking to shore up its balance sheet and avoid a credit rating downgrade.Boeing on Monday began to raise roughly $19 billion by selling stock, an attempt to shore up its finances as a costly and disruptive worker strike weighs on the plane maker’s balance sheet.The sale comes shortly after the aerospace giant reported a $6.1 billion loss in the last quarter and said it was cutting about 17,000 jobs. A weekslong strike by Boeing machinists is costing the company tens of millions of dollars each day, according to analyst estimates, adding to the financial strain created by long-running production and quality issues.The fund-raising aims to stave off a potential credit rating downgrade, which could make it more expensive for the company to borrow money. Boeing has about $58 billion in debt. S&P Global Ratings said this month that it was considering lowering Boeing’s credit rating to “junk” status, depending on how long the strike continues.Boeing’s shares fell about 1 percent Monday morning. The company’s stock has fallen more than 40 percent this year.Last week, Boeing’s largest union, which represents about 33,000 workers, rejected a tentative labor contract, extending a strike that began last month and has halted airplane production at crucial plants in the Seattle area. The proposed agreement did not address a frozen pension plan that workers were seeking to restore.Boeing indicated in regulatory filings this month that it planned to raise as much as $25 billion by selling stock or debt over the next three years, and the company entered into a $10 billion credit agreement with a group of banks. It described the plans as “two prudent steps to support the company’s access to liquidity.”The plane maker hasn’t reported an annual profit since 2018. Before the machinists’ strike started to weigh on the company, two fatal crashes of Boeing’s 737 Max in 2018 and 2019 cost it billions of dollars and severely damaged its reputation. Concerns about the safety of Boeing’s commercial planes resurfaced in January, when a door panel on a 737 Max 9 jet blew open during an Alaska Airlines flight.The stock sale on Monday covers only the company’s near-term needs, “without an extended strike or further production disruptions,” analysts at Wells Fargo said in a research note. More

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      Boeing Union Workers Reject Contract

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      The vote, hours after Boeing reported a $6.1 billion loss, will extend a monthlong strike at factories where the company makes its best-selling commercial plane.Boeing’s largest union rejected a tentative labor contract on Wednesday, a blow to the aerospace manufacturer and the Biden administration, which had intervened in the hopes of ending an economically damaging strike that began more than five weeks ago.The contract, the second that workers have voted down, was defeated by a wide margin, with 64 percent of those voting opposing the deal, according to the union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. The union represents about 33,000 workers, but it did not disclose how many voted on Wednesday.“This wasn’t enough for our members,” said Jon Holden, president of District 751 of the union, which represents the vast majority of the workers. “They’ve spoken loudly and we’re going to go back to the table.”The vote is a setback for Boeing’s new chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, who is trying to restore Boeing’s reputation and business, which he described in detail earlier on Wednesday. In remarks to workers and investors, Mr. Ortberg said Boeing needed to undergo “fundamental culture change” to stabilize the business and to improve execution.“Our leaders, from me on down, need to be closely integrated with our business and the people who are doing the design and production of our products,” he said. “We need to be on the factory floors, in the back shops and in our engineering labs. We need to know what’s going on, not only with our products, but with our people.”Mr. Ortberg delivered that message alongside the company’s quarterly financial results, which included a loss of more than $6.1 billion. This month, Boeing also announced plans to cut its work force by about 10 percent, which amounts to 17,000 jobs. Boeing also recently disclosed plans to raise as much as $25 billion by selling debt or stock over the next three years as it tries to avoid a damaging downgrade to its credit rating.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Executives and Research Disagree About Hybrid Work. Why?

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      Companies like Amazon have required a return to the office five days a week despite findings showing benefits to employers that allow some remote days.Amazon’s C.E.O., Andy Jassy, made waves last month when he demanded that all employees return to the office five days a week. The proclamation seemed to validate similar demands made by executives like JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs’s David Solomon. And it naturally raised the question of whether others might follow suit. (It appears some have.)But it also flew in the face of researchers and their studies that have found hybrid work benefits companies. Stanford’s Nick Bloom, for example, has found that employees who work two days a week at home are just as productive and less likely to quit. (Bloom, like others, speculated that Amazon’s pronouncement was really an attempt to reduce the work force without official layoffs.)So why do so many employers that say they’re data-driven seem to move counter to science?Executives are not convinced by the research. “It’s not like: ‘Aspirin definitely helps with headaches. It’s been proven again and again and again,’” Laszlo Bock, a former senior vice president for people operations at Google, told DealBook. “The academic studies that have been done, and there are not that many, show a range of outcomes — and they generally show a kind of neutral to slightly positive.”Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, said he disagreed, pointing DealBook to a meta-analysis of 108 studies.Some are just over it. Almost five years since the start of the pandemic, many C.E.O.s are ready to move on from an experiment they never wanted to start. “When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant,” Jassy wrote in a memo about ending remote work at Amazon.Grant says C.E.O.s may not always methodically control for whether an effect was caused by remote work, the pandemic or something else, as an academic researcher would. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump vs. Harris Would Be Nothing Without Myths

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      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are making their appeals to the American electorate on the basis of personality, character and policy. But they are also framing themselves as actors in the American story — the events of the recent past and the deeper narrative of U.S. history carried by the symbol-rich stories of our national mythology.There has been very little common ground expressed between the parties in this election, except the belief that a victory by the opposition would be apocalyptic. Even when they invoke the same historical references, they present them in radically different ways. To Democrats, Jan. 6 was a shameful assault on democracy. To many Republicans, it was a patriotic protest of a rigged election.It’s as if we are living in two different countries, each with a different understanding of who counts as American.Each candidate is trying to pitch the contest to voters as a heroic episode in the unfolding of American history and invites them to imagine themselves as players in the narrative.In the “story wars,” Mr. Trump has an advantage over Ms. Harris: Conservatives have devised over decades a store of established mythological American “scripts,” something liberals have failed to do.Among the big issues at stake in the 2024 election, for both the campaigns and the country, is no less than shaping what it means to be an American and who gets to have power.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Harris, in Michigan, Tries to Head Off Trump’s Attacks Over Gas Cars

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      Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday sought to rebut a frequent argument from former President Donald J. Trump that she would mandate the end of gasoline-powered cars, issuing a rare direct response to her White House rival’s exaggerations and misleading claims.Speaking at a rally in Flint, a mid-Michigan city whose onetime cadre of thriving auto factories never recovered from closures in the 1980s, Ms. Harris tried to reassure voters in the state, who are being bombarded by Trump ads that claim she “wants to end all gas-powered cars.”“Michigan, let us be clear,” she said. “Contrary to what my opponent is suggesting, I will never tell you what kind of car you have to drive. But here’s what I will do. I will invest in communities like Flint.”The Harris campaign rally in Flint, Mich., on Friday. The vice president’s campaign has been pitching her as the candidate for the working and middle classes in the northern battleground states.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesThe politics of the nation’s slow march toward more electric vehicles have been tricky in Michigan, a battleground state that is home to the nation’s three major automakers. As the climate crisis has worsened, President Biden’s administration has required emissions standards that will most likely require about half of the new cars sold in the United States to emit zero emissions by 2032.To reach that goal, the Biden administration has offered incentives to manufacturers who produce electric vehicles and tax credits for consumers who buy them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Job Market Is Chugging Along, Completing a Solid Economic Picture

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      For months, the economy has been like a jigsaw with one mismatched piece: Consumer spending has been holding up and overall growth has been solid, but the job market has looked treacherously wobbly.As of Friday, the last piece of that puzzle is finally clicking into place.Fresh employment data for September showed that hiring picked up strongly, the unemployment rate dipped and wage growth came in strong last month. While it is just one report, it matches up with a number of recent signals that the economy is robust.Data revisions released last week showed that growth has been stronger and incomes have been more solid than previously understood. Retail sales data are holding up. And now, it looks as if employers are meeting resilient consumer demand by continuing to expand their workforces. In fact, the report reinforced that by many measures, the job market is as healthy as it has ever been.“The monster upside surprise suggests that the labor market may actually be a picture of strength, not weakness,” Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, wrote in a research note after the report.The fresh data is good news for both the Federal Reserve and the White House, both of which had been anxiously watching a recent tick up in the unemployment rate. When joblessness rises, it can herald a coming recession. If people are struggling to find work, they are likely to pull back on spending, which can further slow the economy.But the September data showed that unemployment ticked down to 4.1 percent, keeping it at a historically low level. And joblessness fell for Black workers, who often struggle more to find work when the economy is weakening.By several measures, hiring conditions are historically strong. People in their prime working years of 25 to 54 are employed at a rate only previously seen in the early 2000s. Average hourly earnings are strong — and climbing — even after adjusting for inflation. Women in their peak working ages are participating in the labor market at the highest levels on record.That combination is all the more notable given the economic ride that America has been on over the past four years. First, the pandemic shuttered businesses and pushed unemployment to towering heights. Then inflation took off, prodding Fed officials to sharply lift interest rates.Historically, such campaigns by the Fed have resulted in significant labor market slowdowns and even painful recessions.This time, though, the central bank appears to be on the cusp of achieving a rare soft landing, a situation in which inflation slows without causing a lot of economic pain in the process. In fact, there is no precedent in which the Fed has cooled inflation from levels as high as those reached in 2022 without incurring significant labor market costs in the process.But the fresh jobs data suggest that a gentle cooling is more than possible — it may be happening. More

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      Jobs Report Adds to Economic Momentum for Harris

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      Vice President Kamala Harris probably could not have hoped for a better run of pre-election economic data than what the United States has enjoyed over the last month, punctuated by Friday’s surprisingly strong jobs report.In recent weeks, key inflation indicators have fallen close to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target rate, after years of running hot under Ms. Harris and President Biden. Federal Reserve officials cut interest rates by a half-percentage point to stoke economic activity, immediately bringing mortgage rates to their lowest point in two years. The Commerce Department confirmed that the economy has grown at a robust 3 percent clip over the last year, after adjusting for rising prices. The Census Bureau reported that the typical household’s inflation-adjusted income jumped in 2023.Those numbers had encouraged Democrats, including policymakers in the White House and close to Ms. Harris’s campaign team. Recent polls have shown Ms. Harris closing the gap, or pulling even, with former President Donald J. Trump on the question of who can best handle the economy and inflation.But it was Friday’s employment report — 254,000 jobs gained, with wages growing faster than prices — that appeared to give Harris boosters a particularly large dose of confidence. The report came less than a day after striking dockworkers agreed to return to work through the end of the year, avoiding what could have been a major economic disruption with a month to go before the election.“The combination of this great job market and easing inflation is generating solid real wage and income gains,” said Jared Bernstein, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. “While those continue to power this expansion forward, we’re also seeing record investment in key sectors, an entrepreneurial boom and gains in worker bargaining power to help ensure that workers get their fair share of all this growth.”Even Mr. Biden, who has attempted to strike a balance between cheering the economy’s performance and acknowledging the struggles created by years of fast-rising prices, sounded more upbeat than normal for a post-jobs-report statement.“Today, we received good news for American workers and families with more than 250,000 new jobs in September and unemployment back down at 4.1 percent,” he said.Independent economists were less cheerful. Several of them acknowledged the strong numbers but warned that they could be illusory, and that the Fed may need to continue to cut interest rates in the months to come to keep unemployment from rising.“The September jobs report is unambiguously strong,” James Knightley, the chief international economist at ING, wrote in a research note. But he immediately warned that other indicators, including Americans’ personal assessments that the job market is worsening, cloud the picture. “We feel that the risks remain skewed towards weaker growth.” More