It was last Wednesday afternoon when two broad-shouldered men with shaved heads disappeared into a conference room. VW works council chairman Bernd Osterloh and Uwe Hück, Porsche's labor representative, were both stone-faced when they entered the Porsche booth at the International Automobile Exhibition (IAA) in Frankfurt. When they closed the door to the conference room, it almost seemed as if they were about to settle their dispute with their fists. The money would have been on Hück -- a two-time European champion in Thai boxing.
By all accounts, the discussion came off peacefully, but the dispute between the two labor leaders is only one of many conflicts between the Volkswagen Group and its new major shareholder, Porsche. Now that it's been two years since Stuttgart-based Porsche first acquired a stake in Volkswagen, the gloves appear to be coming off.
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