And German car engineering is mostly known for being overly complicated, I say that as a German.
Close to zero progress in electrifying European produced cars. I would say unions are the cause for the delay resisting any change away from skills their members have, but obsoleted by electric cars with 1/10 the number of parts required.
Being German doesn't give your statement credibility - you don't have to be German to drive or understand a German car.
If you said "as a German automotive engineer" then it might carry some weight, but only if also provided specifics.
Sure, but for each of those there are 10-100 other smaller companies in automotive or other industries that don't have unions, and some German companies have stirred up quite a few scandals of not following the employment laws or abusing their workforce, which coincidentally was mostly immigrants.
Cherry picking the big, wealthy car brands to represent the manufacturing industry is like cherry picking FAANG for representing the software dev industry.
But pointing out there are wildly successful unions filled with hardworking people is "cherry picking"?
There are good and bad unions everywhere, but I think the closed-shop restrictions in the US that force you to join a particular union as a condition of employment exacerbates the worst qualities of them here.
I've never heard of these people being lazy, not wanting to work etc.
In fact German engineering is the envy of the world!
VW, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche all German engineered and manufactured by heavily unionized workforces!
Sounds like your anecdotal bad experience with unions is not representative of reality.
And FWIW I can list you just as many terrible anecdotes about how awful business managers are...