Its weird AF. Volkswagen is known as the company with by far the biggest workers unification in Germany. Its a legit career path to become the highest ranked workers representative and a significant share of the board members are current of former worker representatives.

There have been some rumors that Volkswagen is treating the worker representatives too well to make them less demanding (extremely high pay, direct access to the CEO, etc.), but thats about it.

Really weird that this is different in the US. Seems to be more a national culture thing and less of a company culture thing.