#Wolfsburg

Automakers temporarily pause production and move things around between factories all the time, but Volkswagen has never closed a factory in its home country of Germany. That could change soon, however, as the automaker recently announced that it would consider plant closures there to help it cut expenses in its core product lines.

In 2016, Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg factory fired an employee named Samir B. He had been working for the automaker for 8 years, mounting tires, but after the company said he began threatening co-workers and telling them of his pledge to join Islamist ISIS fighters in Syria, they had to let him go.

VW felt the threats were serious and worried he might stage a terror attack during a stockholders’ meeting at the company’s Wolfsburg headquarters. Now, a German court has ordered Volkswagen to reinstate him.

The history of the city of Wolfsburg, Saxony, in Germany is inseparable from that of Volkswagen.

The municipality was established originally in 1938 as Stadt des KdF-Wagens bei Fallersleben. It was intended as a model town based around the factory the Nazis built to make Dr. Porsche’s KdF-Wagen, what became the Type I Volkswagen, or Beetle.

To put that historical link between the automobile company and the city into an artistic context, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg is holding an exhibition running through November 9, 2016 titled “ Wolfsburg Unlimited: A City As A World Laboratory“.

Deciding that the company’s annual pre-Christmas party wasn’t a great time to be Wetblanket Wildes, the Porsche-Piech clan affirmed that it would be committed to Volkswagen amid its emissions crises (pl.) and said the company that the family-owned company would “master the situation,” according to Reuters.

The Porsche-Piech family, who owns a majority stake in Volkswagen’s parent company, told the automaker’s board and the town of Wolfsburg that the family has no intention of pulling the plug.

“I am firmly convinced that the city of Wolfsburg together with Volkswagen will master the situation and gain further strength,” Wolfgang Porsche said in a statement, according to Reuters. “The Porsche and Piech families stand behind Volkswagen and Wolfsburg as its headquarters.”

Volkswagen offices and private residences were raided Thursday morning in Wolfsburg as part of the ongoing investigation into the company’s emission scheme that saw “defeat devices” used in its 2.0-liter diesel vehicles, reports German media outlet HAZ.

A team of approximately 50 task force personnel from the Lower Saxony’s office of criminal investigation raided multiple locations to gather evidence on those involved in the scandal.

Volkswagen workers in Wolfsburg are looking forward to a long weekend. No work on Monday, come back Tuesday. Are people not buying enough cars? Im Gegenteil. They are buying too many. Volkswagen is seriously running out of parts.