Saab’s main blue collar union has broadly welcomed the automaker’s purchase by Chinese/Japanese/Swedish consortium, National Eclectic Vehicle Sweden (NEVS), although it will almost certainly be the labour body’s white collar colleagues who are hired first.
Scandinavian supplier body, FKG, told just-auto this week the new electric operation would directly recruit around 200 engineers, but even this small number, out of Saab’s near 4,000 previous workforce, would be unlikely to start work before next year or 2014.
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Nonetheless, IF Metall is breathing a sigh of relief after six long months of bankrupt Saab being in the hands of Gothenburg receivers with light now firmly at the end of the tunnel.
“This is very good – I feel very happy we finally got a solution in this very long time,” IF Metall Saab Automobile chairman, Hakan Scott, told just-auto from Sweden. “Now we know we have a future and how we should deal with the time until we start production again.”
But despite IF Metall’s loyal backing of the deal – thought to have been inked for between EUR1.3bn (US$1.6bn) and EUR1.8bn as former CLEPA CEO Lars Holmqvist told just-auto yesterday – the blue collar union is realistic enough to know its members will have to show considerable patience before being potentially re-employed.
“I think it will take rather long time before we get a large number of employees in this new company,” said Scott. “In the beginning it will be white collar people…it will take quite a time before we have a bigger number of blue collar.”
Holmqvist expressed doubts as to the viability of a low-volume electric car producer, but IF Metall is maintaining a more optimistic outlook that battery powered mobility “is the future” as NEVS looks to potentially target the Chinese market first.
IF Metall met NEVS in Stockholm two weeks ago and will convene further discussions to put some flesh on bones as it looks to understand Saab’s new owner’s industrial relations policy.
Holmqvist is nonetheless adding a hefty dose of realism to some of the more tub-thumping reaction in Sweden this week to what seems to be end of Saab’s drawn out bankruptcy saga.
The former European automotive supplier body CEO fought long and hard to secure repayment of what is thought to be around EUR300m of debt owed by Saab to component makers and doubts whether they will be rushing to equip the new NEVS venture.
“Not in your wildest fantasies will the suppliers gear up development for the hopeful volume of 20,000 [vehicles] a year in two or three years time,” Holmqvist said. “It is reality.”
