General Motors is axing 227 jobs and Renault an additional 100 posts in Spain to step up cost cutting efforts, unions told just-auto on Monday.
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The GM layoffs come two years after the automaker axed 600 workers from its main Figuerelas factory and are part of a move to outsource factory-maintenance operations to an unnamed French firm, the unions said.
Meanwhile Renault – which dismissed 1,000 workers earlier this year to slash the costs of its under-performing Modus mini-MPV project – has offered early retirement to an additional 100 employees, most of them technicians supporting its factories in Valladolid and Palencia.
Ramon Gorris, industrial policy secretary at leading union Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) in Madrid, said his organisation is fiercely opposed to GM’s job cuts. He said unions won’t negotiate a deal until the company explains the economic rationale behind the scheme.
“These workers have been at the factory for over 25 years and they are not going to go just like that,” Gorris said. “They [GM] haven’t explained what they plan to do exactly,” adding that the automaker also wants to cut staff at an electricity plant it uses to power Figuerelas.
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By GlobalDataGM and Renault officials did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.
One positive aspect about the redundancies is that they will not make heads roll at the US and French automobile groups’ Spanish factories.
Gorris said GM’s plan to churn out 375,000 units of the B-segment Corsa supermini this year are on schedule and that production rates will remain robust.
At Renault, it’s a similar story, a union source said.
In a glimmer of hope for the Spanish auto industry, Europe’s third-biggest, manufacturers’ federation Anfac reported that car production soared 18% to 245,182 units in July.
In the first half, output increased 5.5% to 1.57m vehicles, helped by rising demand from the key markets of Germany and France.
The results are encouraging as Spain has been suffering from growing competition from cheaper producers in eastern Europe and a sluggish west European car market.
In 2005, dealers’ lobby Faconauto predicted that Spanish car output would fall 21.7% to 2.33m units by 2009, eating into the country’s European production market share.
Ivan Castano
