A planned transition has taken place among the employee representatives on the Volkswagen AG Supervisory Board. IG Metall Chair Christiane Benner has succeeded her predecessor, Jörg Hofmann, assuming his role as Deputy to Supervisory Board Chair Hans Dieter Pötsch. Additionally, she will take Hofmann’s place on the Executive Committee.
“I would like to thank Jörg Hofmann for over nine years of dedicated service and close collaboration. His valuable contributions to the Supervisory Board and Executive Committee—across nearly 100 meetings—have played a key role in guiding the Group through the transformation of the automotive industry,” said Pötsch.
Christiane Benner, Chair of IG Metall stated: “I am delighted to take up my new role and responsibilities as IG Metall’s representative on the Supervisory Board of Volkswagen AG. The Group and its workforce are facing an enormous undertaking, and together we must succeed in completing vital stages in the transformation. I will do everything in my power to facilitate this. We must ensure that the business objectives of economic efficiency and job security continue to be given equal weighting. The strong representation of women on the Supervisory Board of Volkswagen AG is a wonderful added incentive.”
Christiane Benner took over as Chair of the IG Metall union in October 2023. Born in Aachen on 9 February 1968, she completed her school-leaving diploma at the end of the 1980s and went on to train as a foreign language secretary. Her first position was in the sales department of Carl Schenk AG in Darmstadt, a mechanical engineering company that is now a member of the Dürr Group. From 1993 to 1999, Christiane Benner studied sociology with an emphasis on industrial sociology at the universities of Marburg and Frankfurt am Main, where she obtained her degree. In the mid1990s she also spent time in the USA, where she gained a bachelor’s degree.
Christiane Benner began her work for IG Metall in 1997, first in the Frankfurt branch, where she was responsible for young workers and looked after regional companies in the information and communications technology sector (ICT) for the union. From 2000 to 2008 she managed IG Metall’s district office for Lower Saxony and Saxony Anhalt, retaining her focus on ICT. She took on responsibility for collective bargaining policy from 2006.
In 2008, Christiane Benner moved back to Frankfurt, this time as a divisional head in the union’s headquarters, where she was responsible for IT, engineering and work with specific target groups. In 2011, she was elected managing member of the Board of Management of IG Metall, and in 2015 she became Deputy Chair. Her election as Chair of IG Metall followed in 2023. 57-year-old Christiane Benner is the first ever woman to head Germany’s largest industrial union, which has over two million members. She has been Deputy Chair of the Supervisory Board of Continental AG since 2018, and was a member of the Supervisory Board of BMW AG from 2014 to 2024.
