After a visit to the Opel headquarters in Rüsselsheim, Hessian Economics Minister Kaweh Mansoori (SPD) called for “a perspective for the location”. “We stand behind the employees, we know what our colleagues at Opel have been doing for the entire region for decades, some of them in the third, fourth, fifth generation in Rüsselsheim,” said the minister on Friday after an appearance at a works meeting at the Opel factory. “And we are also available with ideas on how we can make the industry in Hesse competitive and future-proof.” Lower electricity prices and an expansion of the charging infrastructure for electric cars are necessary. Since the beginning of this week, only one shift has been run at the Rüsselsheim factory The production lines had come to a complete standstill in the first week of December. The company justified the latter with the conversion of work processes to “new, flexible shift models”. Single-shift operation is initially planned until the end of January. The IG Metall union fears that a longer absence from the second shift could lead to more temporary workers having to leave, after around 200 were deregistered in October. There are currently at least 400 temporary workers at the Opel plant in Rüsselsheim, said the first representative of IG Metall in Darmstadt, Daniel Bremm, to the F.A.Z. Some of them were specifically recruited from abroad. “And the question is also what will happen to the temporary employees.” The works meeting was correspondingly “emotional”. Astra and DS4 are rolling off the production line in Rüsselsheim. Mansoori referred to the works council’s demands for “a high-volume model here for the location”. The Opel Astra is produced in Rüsselsheim, as is the DS 4, a model from the French brand DS Automobiles, which, like Opel, belongs to the Stellantis Group. Although sales of electric cars at Opel collapsed after the state purchase bonus was abolished at the end of 2023, as did other manufacturers, the Astra sold well across all drive types in Germany: from January to November, according to the Federal Motor Vehicle Authority, almost 45,000 new Astras were registered, a good twice as many as in the same period last year. Nevertheless, another model would probably be necessary to ensure sustained high utilization, said Bremm.More on the topicWith a view to the ongoing job cuts – the current round of severance payments involves 1,000 jobs – Minister Mansoori warned of further savings in the Rüsselsheim development center. “A reduction in future areas such as the development of fuel cells must be avoided at all costs. There may also be no relocation of jobs abroad. The engineering in Rüsselsheim must be secured,” wrote the Ministry of Economic Affairs in a press release. Stellantis began series production of transporters that run on hydrogen at the end of January. Despite this success for the fuel cell developers in Rüsselsheim, jobs are also being cut in this department, as an engineer reported on Friday morning on the way to the works meeting. He expressed the fear that Rüsselsheim would be less and less likely to be able to land projects in competition with other development centers in the group, given that the workforce has been shrinking for years: “The fewer we are, the less we can do.” He is now thinking about it himself The 56-year-old man said he would like to give up his job in exchange for severance pay. Not many Opel employees leave voluntarily. The severance pay program is based on an agreement between the company and the works council in 2020. At that time, it was determined that Stellantis could cut jobs in several steps through a voluntary program in exchange for extending employment guarantees for the remaining workforce. However, recently not as many employees as hoped were willing to leave in exchange for severance pay. That’s why a special bonus was introduced for employees who decide to leave by January 10th. In 2017, when Opel was taken over by Stellantis’ predecessor company PSA, around 15,000 people were still working in Rüsselsheim. Today, according to IG Metall, there are fewer than 8,000. When asked, the Opel press office always gives the number 8,300, although this reflects the status a year ago. The press office does not want to announce current figures until the turn of the year.
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