Volkswagen's board approved an additional 50,000 job cuts last Thursday, on top of the roughly 35,000 already agreed in 2024, and gave itself until June 2027 to decide what happens to four of its German factories. The union put out its own statement the same day, and that's the one the factory towns will hold onto.

Quick reminder here that Volkswagen leadership can't simply cut jobs or close a factory on their own; big moves in Germany need a second board where employee representatives and the state government together hold a majority of the votes. So when management presented an initial plan to make significant changes to the business on July 9, the employee side voted it down twelve to seven. On Thursday the same board voted yes unanimously. The headcount numbers hadn’t changed, though. What did change, according to German media reports, is that a plan to spin off VW's core car brand into a separate company came off the table and the four factories that were initially listed as closures shifted to "assess." So the management team got its headcount number and the employee side got a reprieve on the plant closures. Investors were clearly happy to see the headcount number confirmed with shares rising as much as eight percent on the day and closed up about six.

Now look at the plant language. The company's release says the four factories have no guaranteed production lined up after 2031 and that a competitive future for them "cannot currently be secured." It says "alternative uses" are being assessed and a final plan will be delivered some time in June 2027. Ten months is a long time to ask a family, a community, a town to hold its breath. The release features five voices including Oliver Blume the CEO, the chairman, the state premier, the head of the union and the head of the works council, and, to the comms team's credit, it reads like one unified decision.

But later that day, union chief Christiane Benner and works council head Daniela Cavallo issued a second joint statement, and it doesn't sound like the first. Management's "confrontational course and communication in recent weeks were not productive," it said, and had caused "great uncertainty" among staff. "No plant has been given up, and contrary to several media reports, no plant closure has been sealed." The board "must now do its homework." And by Sunday they were at it again, telling Bloomberg the CEO has no "blank check" and that they will "never accept" the burden "being placed one-sidedly on employees." So four days after a unanimous vote, both sides are still talking to their own audiences and not to each other.

This is the hardest kind of restructuring to communicate: layoffs, a decision deadline nearly a year away and an empty, uncertain middle. Particularly difficult because the people in that middle are mostly stuck. The plant in Zwickau has already shrunk from around 11,000 workers to about 8,000, in a place where the plant is the economy. A line worker there is worried about a job, but also weighing whether the town has a future, and ten months is a long time to wait. The few who can leave will go but everyone else who stays gets angrier and fills the middle with the worst version of the story.

The rule I tend to follow is that when you can't announce the outcome, at least explain the process, share the constraints and say when you'll be back with updates. But a date on the calendar only helps if people understand what can still change before then. In VW's case that's more than the release lets on. Forced layoffs are barred through 2030 under the existing agreement, the 50,000 is a planning assumption that could shrink if savings turn up elsewhere, and the company is reportedly exploring Chinese buyers or non-car uses for the four plants. Get leadership to say which options remain open, what would make them workable and how employees can act on them, because that gives people a way to judge the process while they're still living through it.

ICYMI, on Friday, the same day a Massachusetts judge declared a mistrial in the Lindsay Clancy case (the jury deadlocked over whether postpartum psychosis left her not criminally responsible for killing her three children), Amanda Hirsch, who hosts the podcast Not Skinny But Not Fat, put up a paid branded partnership post on IG saying, "On Polymarket it was predicted the verdict would be Not Guilty. Are you surprised? #Polymarketpartner." 

The backlash was swift and by Sunday she'd deleted the post and published an apology ... with the comments turned off. 

We can very easily pick apart the language in the post itself but I want to focus instead on the decision to turn comments off because we continue to see brands and individuals alike opt for this approach. And this is yet another example of why it’s the wrong move in a crisis.

Because, to no one’s surprise, people simply scrolled up one square in the IG grid to a clip about Dancing With the Stars, and left their comments there instead.

The top one, with more than 650 likes: "A comments off apology - isn't an apology." Then "Turn on your comments." Then a long thread of people telling her to donate the fee to a maternal mental health organization. Meanwhile the apology itself has been shared more than 6,000 times. So she didn't shrink the audience at all, she just handed people a second thing to be mad about. 

And notice who's carrying all of this. As of this morning every headline is still "podcaster apologizes" and not one of the stories I read carries a Polymarket statement, or even the "did not respond to a request for comment" line that at least tells you somebody asked. 

One thing that came up in my research: Polymarket actually sued Massachusetts in February to head off the state's attempt to shut prediction markets down there. So it ran a market on a Massachusetts murder trial, paid an influencer to promote it, and the state trying to close it hasn't said a word. Keep watching this one.

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