“This is a catastrophe,” says Giuseppe Ciccone, standing in front of a Bosch engineering plant in Munich, Germany. On a day of action organized by the IG Metall union, he has just given a combative speech to about six hundred workers. The chairman of the local Bosch works council (a structure for employee representation), Ciccone has been working at the plant for almost four decades, having started there at age eighteen. The plant and its employees are a central part of his life. “Like a family,” he says. But, as of late, the family has been wracked by crisis, with the plant’s future now at stake.

Last year, Bosch announced plans to close the facility, hitherto known as a production site for combustion engines, manufacturing fuel pumps and valves for diesel and petrol engines — none of which are going to be used in electric cars. Twenty years ago, about 1,600 people worked at the site; today, there are only about 260 left. But their fight against the planned closure has come to symbolize the wider conflict over Germany’s auto industry — and its workers’ future.