Volkswagen Chief Executive Oliver Blume is considering taking a sweeping cost-cutting plan directly to shareholders if supervisory board factions fail to agree at a meeting set for Friday, people familiar with his plans said. The step would bypass worker representatives, who hold half the board seats, and local government swing votes—a nuclear option without precedent at Volkswagen or in the broader German corporate scene, where stakeholder capitalism has long meant consensus among workers, regulators and shareholders. Blume this summer presented a plan that envisioned doubling job losses to 100,000, knowing it would be rejected. Stakeholders have weighed competing turnaround proposals ahead of the session, but sources said a breakthrough remains unlikely after readiness for compromise faltered following workers' assemblies, even as management, top shareholders, labour and Lower Saxony representatives met earlier in the week. Under pressure from owner families to cut jobs and production, Blume faces an explosive power struggle at Europe's largest automaker over restructuring that could include plant closures, division separations and deep layoffs, with unions resisting any reopening of a prior deal and Saxony pressing to limit cuts at sites employing about 10,000 people.