Opel is offering severance packages to the 300 employees producing transmissions at its Bochum plant.
Bloomberg reported that the programme includes the opportunity for workers to join a transfer company – to help them prepare for new jobs – for a year.
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Employees can also opt to shift to the vehicle-assembly line at Bochum or transfer to another Opel plant.
The report said that the agreement reached between management, Opel’s works council and the IG Metall labour union is independent of talks on the future of employees at the Bochum carmaking unit that’s scheduled to close by the end of 2014.
An IG Metall spokesman told just-auto earlier this year that finding alternative employment for Opel workers in the Bochum area will be difficult.
“In the Bochum area it is really difficult to get another job,” he said
The Rhine town has already suffered, noted IG Metall, with the decision by Nokia to downsize and the addition of 3,000 new unemployed to the dole queues will present yet further challenges.
