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英文原文
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5ae421be-6dcd-11e5-8171-ba1968cf791a.html
Volkswagen’s home city enveloped in fear, anger and disbelief
Few cities are as dependent on one company as Wolfsburg. Situated 200km west of Berlin, it is home not just to the world’s biggest factory and Volkswagen’s headquarters, it also has a VW Arena where Champions League football is played, a VW bank, and even a VW butcher that makes award-winning curried sausage.
“VW is God here,” says a Turkish baker on the main shopping street of Porschestrasse.
But news of VW’s diesel emissions scandal has hit the city hard, sparking anger and dismay as well as worries of the financial and employment consequences for both the carmaker and Wolfsburg. Some are even invoking the decline of another motor city — Detroit in the US.
“I am worried. It’s not good for Wolfsburg. Detroit stands as a negative example for what can happen: the city has collapsed. The same here is also thinkable,” says Uwe Bendorf, who was born and raised in Wolfsburg and now works at a health insurer.
VW’s sprawling factory employs about 72,000 in a city with just 120,000 inhabitants. Over an area of more than 6 sq km — three times the size of the principality of Monaco — the plant churns out 840,000 cars a year, including the VW Golf, Tiguan and Touran models.
Among workers, the scandal dominates rather like the chimney stacks of the factory’s power station tower over Wolfsburg.
“It was shock. Then anger. How could they be so stupid?” says one worker, describing his emotions on hearing last month that VW had admitted to large scale cheating in tests on its diesel vehicles for harmful emissions of nitrogen oxides.
Another worker says: “Everyone is worried. Will we get our bonus still? Will there be job cuts? There is so much uncertainty.”
WOLFSBURG, GERMANY - SEPTEMBER 28: A general view of Wolfsburg, home to German carmaker Volkswagen on September 28, 2015 in Wolfsburg, Germany. Wolfsburg was initially built by authorities under Nazi Germany to house workers and the factory that would produce the "KdF Wagen", the precursor to the Volkswagen Beetle meant as an affordable car for the people. After World War II production expanded rapidly and the city grew. Today the city has a population of 123,000 and of those 50,000 work at Volkswagen. Wolfsburg has the highest income per capita of any city in Germany. Volkswagen is currently undergoing its deepest crisis in its history due to the company's deliberate manipulation of emissions test results in millions of its diesel passenger car engines. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)©Getty
Wandering around Wolfsburg, snatches of conversation about the carmaker can frequently be heard. “VW is sh*t, Wolfsburg is sh*t, why did we move here?” a woman shouted at her partner on one recent evening on Porschestrasse. In an Italian restaurant in the city centre located next door to VW’s governance, risk and compliance department, a man said: “If I were [Matthias] Müller [VW’s new chief executive], what I’d do is . . .”
Nazi leader Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945) inspects the new, Volkswagen 'people's car' at the Fallersleben car factory, 27th May 1938. The factory is designed to manufacture six million of the cars. On Hitler's left is the car's designer Dr Ferdinand Porsche (1875 - 1951). (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)©Getty
Wolfsburg did not exist until the late 1930s when Adolf Hitler chose the windswept plain 75km east of Hannover as the location for his people’s car — what eventually became the VW Beetle. The city was even known as Stadt des KdF Wagens for the first few years of its existence after the Nazi’s Kraft durch Freude (strength through joy) leisure organisation. “An exemplary German working-class town,” was how Hitler described his project.
At the end of the second world war, the city became known as Wolfsburg and VW was resurrected with the help of the British army in whose sector of West Germany the town lay. Fast forward to recent times and the city in 2013 was Germany’s richest per head thanks to VW’s recent success and big bonus payments to workers.
WOLFSBURG, Germany: View of the building housing the "Phaeno" Science Center and museum, built by London-based Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid, in Wolfsburg 23 November 2005. The building, which has 9.000 square meters of exhibition space, will house a science center where people will be able to "experience" scientific experiments. The center, built at a cost of EUR 80 million, will be inaugurated 25 November 2005. AFP PHOTO DDP/JOCHEN LUEBKE GERMANY OUT (Photo credit should read JOCHEN LUEBKE/AFP/Getty Images)©AFP
Signs of VW’s influence can be seen throughout Wolfsburg from the Ritz-Carlton hotel and its Michelin three-star restaurant next to the factory, to the science museum designed by star architect Dame Zaha Hadid.
Now the boom times appear to be coming to an end. Wolfsburg’s mayor has announced a budget freeze with projects including parking places at the hospital and an improvement of the swimming pool put on ice.
Corporate tax from VW is thought to represent as much as a third of Wolfsburg’s entire budget and that is expected to plummet as the carmaker’s profits are hit by fines and possible lawsuits, with the company already setting aside |
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发表于 2015-10-15 15:20
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