LABOUR representatives at General Motors’ loss-making European unit Opel said yesterday they would not engage in plant-by-plant talks on restructuring measures, preferring a Europe-wide strategy to save factories and jobs.
Opel managers were expected to present a business plan to the supervisory board tomorrow that might involve closing two plants in Europe to trim capacity by 30 per cent.The two plants considered most at risk are at Bochum in Germany and Ellesmere Port in Britain.
“We will not negotiate with you on a local level,” European labour representatives said in an open letter yesterday to Opel chief executive Karl-Friedrich Stracke.
“Labour forces are gearing up to avoid being played off against one another by management,” said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, director of the Centre for Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
Mr Stracke said this month there were “no taboos” in the company’s drive to cut costs, although he would honour an agreement not to shut any sites before the end of 2014. Opel, based in Rüsselsheim, Germany, made that agreement with unions in 2010 in exchange for concessions from labour worth €265 million a year.
Harry Voigtsberger, economy minister of Germany’s western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Bochum is located, called on GM yesterday to use the coming two years to work out a “perspective” for the plant and its workforce. Germany’s most populous federal state will hold elections on May 13th.
Opel still employs about 3,200 workers in Bochum after 1,400 jobs have been cut since 2010 and another 300 will disappear when gear transmission production ends in 2013, according to company spokesman Andreas Krömer.
GM has grown increasingly impatient with the chronic losses in Europe, including $747 million last year. It has joined forces with France’s Peugeot Citroen to help find $2 billion of annual cost savings. The two manufacturers will start work on joint projects by the end of 2012 and have each appointed five executives to a steering committee to oversee and explore areas of co-operation.
Mr Stracke also said Opel would keep a promise to invest €11 billion by 2014 and bring 30 new products to market. – (Reuters)