Volkswagen will announce Thursday a deadline for whistleblowers to come forward with information related to the ongoing diesel scandal without reprisal.
According to the CBC, German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Wednesday the automaker is working to gather as much information on the scandal as possible by applying more pressure to employees who may have known anything about what happened regarding the rigging of diesel emissions through software.
The proposed deadline for whistleblower amnesty will likely be set for the end of November. VW promises staff who do speak out about their role in the scandal — which came to light in mid-September 2015 when the EPA discovered the aforementioned software-based emissions cheating — will be granted amnesty, while board members and management will be excluded.
The latest announcement on the whistleblower program comes after engineers last week admitted to cheating on carbon dioxide emissions tests in order to appease former parent company CEO Martin Winterkorn and his excessively high goals for so-called clean diesel technology.
Come forward ye guilty engineers and fear not reprisal.
So, what happens if they fail to come forward after the deadline? Fired? Sued? Jailed? Death? Whatever it is, it should be applied to engineers before the deadline.
I suspect that additionally there’s a large SPIFF or some other compensation for coming forward now so they can be indoctrinated into whatever the official response is going to be that the attorneys have dreamed up.
If you come forward before the whistle-blower deadline the coup de grâce will be delivered quickly to the base of the head.
After the deadline – coup de grâce will be a shot gun to the groin.
This is like going to HR with a workplace related problem.. what most don’t realize is that HR is never ever there to help the employee. They are there to look out for the interests of the company. Those VW engineer’s better lawyer up before even thinking about spilling the beans. Anyone know what kind of work place protections there are in Germany? I’m with Maximum Bob on this. Piech’s management style caused this.
Wise.
Whoever speaks up at VW, will also be ostracized in their non-professional life. Any German who knows what is good for their social life (techno parties, mostly) will not say anything that casts German icons in bad light.
The overwhelming public opinion in Germany is that VW has not done anything wrong and that everyone else is cheating on emissions too.
A friend who is in the process of moving to Germany just came back from a brief trip there, and he was stunned at the cognitive dissonance on this.
“Nein, nein, we didn’t do anything worng” I can hear them saying…
So fake! Kein Geheimnis hier.
Who are they trying to fool with this fake drama? They know what they did, and how this happened. This is no Scooby-Doo mystery.
Zoinks!
The Diesel Phantom is really Old Man Piech! He wanted to get back in control of VW and scare away all the regulators. And he would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for some kids and their dog.
(I watch too much Scooby-Doo)
Yeah, but, like, his diving suit got covered in that kooky glowing seaweed.
This is what I think, too. Either VW is lying about knowing what was going on and how it happened, or they are admitting to having an entire rogue division, with enough magnitude to severely damage the entire industry let alone the whole corporation. This is either a case of extreme cynicism or utter incompetence.
Just judging from the size and ambition of the VW corporation, I’d vote for the lying. I can’t imagine there weren’t checks and balances involved in signing off on things like a whole product line. If this division was truly allowed to act unsupervised, the house cleaning at VW ought to go a whole lot further than just a few managers and engineers. Lawyers, HR, board members… A lot of people played part in this, and there’s a lot of consequence beyond just fees and prosecution from your employer to be meted out.
Ditto. Of course the upper management simply accepted that the giant emissions issue/challenge had been overcome without using the Mercedes Addblue technology, without wanting to know any details…
Plausible deniability anyone?
Snitches get stitches
Simply by having a deadline for whistle blower amnesty is sending a message that whistle blowing and telling the truth is not at all welcome at VW. This just keeps getting better.