Despite the crisis at General Motors, Opel is not expecting to cut employees.
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The current contract guarantees jobs until 2010 and this agreement will be respected, a spokesman told German press agency dpa. “Job cuts are not on the agenda”, he said.
Around 25,700 people work at Opel’s four German plants in Rüsselsheim, Bochum, Eisenach and Kaiserslautern.
Workers representatives are not impressed by the idea of GM merging with Chrysler. “When two people with bad feet get together, they don’t win marathons,” said Opel works council head Klaus Franz. This would just expand GM’s problems.
GM cut around 9,000 jobs in 2005 after reporting heavy losses. In the last week, Opel has announced production cuts at all German plants apart from Rüsselsheim, in response to falling sales.
These measures should stop Opel having to take more drastic measures such as job cuts, and has so far been achieved using flexible working agreements.
As reported by just-auto yesterday, the works council fears Opel may lose some vehicle development work to the parent company in the US, which itself is cutting back the number of models it develops because of reduced demand for gas guzzlers.
