Controversy

Nazi connections

Günther Quandt, whose family became major shareholders of BMW 15 years after the war, was a member of the Nazi Party from 1933. After Hitler's election he was appointed to the position of Leader of the Armament Economy, which was a title given to industrialists who played a leading role in the Nazi war economy. Quandt's factories supplied ammunition, rifles, artillery and batteries for the Nazis and, it is claimed, used slave labourers from concentration camps in some of his factories.^[47] Quandt's first wife, Magda, later married the Nazi propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels.^[48]

A documentary aired on German TV in 2007 claimed that Quandt not only utilized slave labour, but also sidestepped postwar recrimination. BMW itself was not implicated in the documentary, and the firm has made no comment about the Quandts, but claims to have confronted its own wartime history via independent research projects.^[47] The Quandt family responded by pledging to fund a research project into the family's Nazi past and its role under the Third Reich.^[49]

Former Danish freedom fighter Carl Adolf Sørensen (b. ca. 1927) has been asked to meet with the Quandt family and possibly receive compensation, but has repeatedly refused to do so on the grounds that it is too late. In 1943, as a 17 year old, he and 39 other resistance fighters were sent to Germany where they worked with dangerous chemicals, some dying within a few months, and only four of the group are still alive (as of May 2009).^[50]

2009 job cuts

In February, 2009, BMW cut 850 jobs at their plant near Oxford, England. The third of the workers that were agency staff did not receive any redundancy pay. Agency staff expressed their fury at being given just one hour's notice of the redundancies.^[51]

The joint general secretary of the union Unite, Tony Woodley, attacked the decision:

“

It is tough enough for workers in those car companies who have seen their market collapse in recent months, but BMW makes a top-selling product in Mini and owed it to their staff to treat them better. Sacking an entire shift like this, and targeting agency workers who have no rights to redundancy pay, is blatant opportunism on BMW's part and nothing short of scandalous[52]