General Motors plans to axe 2,000 additional jobs at its Opel arm but has changed its mind on management cost cuts, European labour leaders said after a face to face meeting with Opel CEO Nick Reilly on Monday. But Reilly immediately denied the claim in a statement issued after the meeting.
“There is no plan to go beyond the approximately 8,300 job reductions communicated earlier in conjunction with the restructuring. The “additional 2,000 jobs” refer to employees who had already signed up to a pre-retirement part-time programme in 2006 in Germany,” he said.
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“According to the plans, headcount will be cut by 2,000 additional persons in comparison to management statements in public,” Opel’s European works council had said in a statement.
“Some of the actions we need to take are unfortunate and tough, but the reality is that we have to act,” Reilly said. He called upon the employee representatives to work with management for the good of the company in order to not lose more time.
Documents from GM’s “Viability Plan VI” seen by Reuters showed the number of Opel staff slated to fall by around 9,960 to 37,700. Germany would take the brunt of cuts, with 5,660 jobs to go.
The labour officials also said they learned in the meeting Opel no longer planned to reduce management costs by 35%.
“On the contrary, new management staff has been hired,” they said.
GM has said it wants staff to accept its plan by mid-February to help the carmaker shrink to a profitable size.
Insisting that the Antwerp plant GM recently doomed stay open, labour has frozen negotiations with GM over the automaker’s proposal to make EUR265m (US$372.1m) in annual wage cuts across the continent over the next five years.
On that, Reilly said today: “Frequent repetition of the claim that the company was allegedly in breach of a contract does not make that claim any more true. This document clearly spelled out that building a small SUV in Antwerp was a plan. Given the dramatic change in the overall economy this plan had to be changed.”
