Posted 04/19/2018 13:22:46 CET
HAMBURG (GERMANY), Apr. 19 (Reuters / EP) –
The CEO of Opel, Michael Lohscheller, stressed that the plants of the company in Germany have costs that are double that of the other factories that the PSA Group has in other countries.
Lohscheller made these statements to his employees in the framework of negotiations that the company maintains with the unions to reach an agreement that guarantees the efficiency of the factories of the firm in Germany in exchange for investments.
The future of the Opel plant in Eisenach (Germany), which employs 1,800 people, is at stake. The union representatives rejected the salary concessions demanded by PSA earlier this week.
The German Opel facilities have so far been excluded from the investment plans of the French automobile consortium. In addition, the company demands that the workers of the firm in Germany give up the extra Christmas pay and other benefits to help increase the efficiency of the plant.
For its part, the German union IG Metall stresses that PSA cost targets per vehicle can not be met without the administration making salary concessions, and requires Opel management to fulfill its promise to allocate more production to the Eisenach plant.
The magazine ‘Spiegel’, citing sources of IG Metall, reported that Opel would need to reduce its workforce in the plant to 1,000 workers, if the current production plans are implemented and no new models are added to the production line .
The PSA Group closed last year an agreement with the US consortium General Motors for the purchase of the Opel / Vauxhall brands and the operations in Europe of its financial subsidiary GM Financial for an amount of 2,200 million euros.