Car wars

"The company is running out of time. Every month more money is being burned," works council chairman Klaus Franz said on Friday, and warned Opel's management that workers would not contribute to the restructuring of the company. Since all European governments continue to refuse financial aid, the necessary financing looks increasingly uncertain.

The Antwerp works council announced a general meeting next Tuesday, which a delegation from their German counterparts will also attend. The head of the Bochum-based German works council Rainer Einenkel warned that further cuts were expected. "We're not over the hill yet," he told German state broadcaster WDR. "Plans have been put forward that include the closure of more plants." Opel has already announced that it expects to cut around 4,000 jobs in Opel's German factories.

Einenkel said that the coming negotiations with the Opel management promised to be difficult. Opel is asking its workers to take wage cuts amounting to 265 million euros a year in order to help finance restructuring, though for the works councils a condition for the agreement was keeping all plants open. "We will not pay for the closure of Antwerp," Einenkel promised.

In an open letter to Opel CEO Nick Reilly, workers' representatives of Germany's four Opel plants in Ruesselsheim, Kaiserslautern, Eisenach and Bochum said, "We will resist the closure of any plants, especially the closure of the Antwerp plant. An agreement over the expected wage cuts is impossible in these conditions."

EU refuses to help

Opel's US parent company General Motors is calling on the relevant European governments to provide 2.7 billion euros ($3.8 billion) in aid to finance the restructuring. The European Commission is investigating whether European Union competition regulations would allow state aid, but the EU's competition commissioner Neelie Kroes pointed out that no member state had informed the EU body of any plans to provide government support.

The works councils are planning a major demonstration next Tuesday outside the Antwerp plant to protest against Thursday's decision to close the factory, which employs 2,600 people. The German trade union IG Metall described the closure as a "declaration of war against all the European employees of Opel."

A company spokesman at Opel's headquarters in Ruesselsheim defended the closure, citing over-capacity and financial constraints.

The works council, however, added that the closure constituted a breach of contract. A press statement said, "The breach of the framework agreement, by which Antwerp was to get the exclusive production of two small SUV models, to replace the production of the Astra, affects us all." Under new plans, the SUVs models will be produced in GM's Daewoo factory in South Korea.

The restructuring plan stands

According to Nick Reilly, the company intends to present its restructuring plan by the end of January, as planned. Negotiations with the works councils will continue next week.

Kris Peeters, premier of the Belgian region of Flanders, demanded that the plans be presented immediately. Following a meeting with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso in Brussels, Peeters called for proof that the decision to close the Antwerp plant, rather than another European plant, had been economically rather than politically motivated.

The European Commission announced Friday that Opel employees who lost their jobs would be entitled to European social aid.

bk/dpa/APD
Editor: Rick Demarest