Escape tendencies at Opel: The new Opel rulers are heading for conflict with IG Metall

04/13/2018

Escape tendencies at Opel The new Opel rulers are heading for conflict with IG Metall

AFP

The boss and his Opel boss: Carlos Tavares (l.) And Michael Lohscheller.

Carlos Tavares has a reputation to lose: that of the successful car company Sanierers. So the head of PSA Peugeot Citroën after the takeover of Opel made crystal clearWhat he plans to do with the lossy traditional brand from Germany: to renovate.

In the meantime, however, the Portuguese must be careful that he does not lose people. According to information from manager-magazin.de, according to marketing director Tina Müller and head of personnel Ulrich Schumacher in recent weeks and months, numerous other top managers of the second or third management level Opel Christian Löer, Marketing Director for Germany, Michael Eiermann, Production Director at the Rüsselsheim plant, Christian Mengel, Director Advanced Vehicle or Marzell Bandur, Director Supply Chain Planning.

Some raced straight to rivals such as Ralph Hannapel, director of electrification, who moved to LandRover, or Birgit Böhm, now treasury head at BMW. Personnel consultants such as Egon Zehnder also said that several Opel top people were looking for new jobs. And they are “not the bad ones”.

The justification is, at least unofficially, almost always the same. The new gentlemen of PSA The pressure is enormous, the managing directors Rémi Girardon (production) and Philippe de Rovira (CFO), who were sent from Tavares to Opel, left little room for development for Michael Lohscheller, formally Opel boss. In management, they rant about a “clash of culture”.

The new reality ensures escape movements even in the lower ranks. For example, 1,500 contracts for partial retirement and early retirement have been signed since January, with the majority opting for early retirement – and thus an immediate exit. “The voluntary offers for partial retirement and early retirement are very well received,” comments an Opel spokesman.

Lohscheller advertised most recently in the employee magazine for the hard course of the French. The competitors are “far ahead” Opel, the numbers sobering: “While other German car makers report record results, we continued to write losses in the last year alone in the period from 1 August to the end of the year as part of Groupe PSA is a loss of 179 Calculated millions of euros – mathematically, this results in a return of minus 2.5 percent, “said Lohscheller.

There are already signs that Tavares is questioning previous pledges to maintain his reputation. So he should no longer consider his promise to accept the German collective bargaining agreements as sacrosanct.

There could be a first showdown at the Eisenach plant: there Tavares’ people want to build the actually promised two models only if the IG Metall approves deviations from the collective agreement. So far, the trade unionists have, of course, been hard-core.

To home page