Union workers at General Motors Europe’s Vauxhall Ellesmere Port factory in Cheshire have walked out, following news that parent firm GM was considering cutting 1,000 jobs.
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The “spontaneous” walkout followed “extremely unhelpful” comments by GM’s European President Carl Peter Forster, union officials told the BBC.
The Ellesmere Port plant stopped operating after the walkout and staff on the afternoon shift also walked out shortly after they arrived for work.
Union officials denied to Reuters that they had instigated the walkout.
Reuters said the union blamed the walkout on comments by GM Europe president Carl-Peter Forster who said on Wednesday, at the opening of a new R&D centre near the Opel plant at Russelsheim, that the company had proposed cutting nearly 1,000 jobs at the plant to streamline production of the Opel/Vauxhall Astra model.
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By GlobalDataIt was unclear when they planned to return to work, a union spokesman told Reuters.
Vauxhall did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
Forster reportedly said the car maker was negotiating with labour representatives who wanted to spread production cuts over other GM plants in Europe that make the Astra compact, but that the idea was “not super-attractive.”
“This just delays a real solution,” he told Reuters at Wednesday’s opening event.
If a shift were eliminated, this would lead to 1,000 job losses, the union, which represents about a third of the plant’s workforce, told the BBC.
“We would have expected better from such a senior executive of the company,” Roger Maddison of the Amicus union told the broadcaster.
“His [Forster’s] comments are extremely unhelpful during critical ongoing negotiations between the company and trade unions in Germany.”
The talks, which started as GM Europe was opening a design centre in Ruesselsheim, Germany, are not set to end until Friday, the BBC said.
“British car workers are among the best in Europe, but they’re the easiest to sack,” Tony Woodley, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, told the broadcaster.
“These decisions are not led by business logic, but by the fact that our laws don’t protect our workers.”
A day before the walkout, Amicus had expressed its opposition to the UK being singled out for job cuts saying it made “no sense”, the report noted.
Instead Amicus said it wanted cuts to be spread throughout Europe’s Astra plants in Belgium and Germany.
Amicus reportedly said it had put several proposals to the firm which were still being considered, in an attempt to avoid job cuts.
General Motors is currently assessing production levels at three Astra factories in Europe but a spokesman told just-auto on Wednesday no decision had been made.
He stressed the company wanted to do so as soon as possible to remove the uncertainty for those involved.
