Quarrel at Opel
Works council, union and the new owner PSA fight a hard fight for the rehabilitation of the German Opel works.
DüsseldorfBei Opel reached the Conflict between works council and company the next round. From the point of view of employee representation, the ailing car manufacturer goes too far with its job cuts.
Opel– Employees managed the company voluntarily against the payment of a severance payment leave. In the opinion of the works council, this program is on legally shaky ground. The company contradicts.
The works council quoted on Monday in a leaflet distributed in Rüsselsheim from a letter from the Federal Employment Agency, according to which redundancies under the severance pay program are only legally possible from 15 June.
Controversy over capacity utilization of the Opel works: Opel workers threaten with escalation of the labor dispute
According to the Opel personnel department, as early as May, about 400 employees left the company after paying a severance payment. The program was offered to employees who were not eligible for either part-time or early retirement.
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According to the leaflet, Opel had indicated to the agency, in this way by up to 1200 of the approximately 19,000 employees in Germany want to disconnect. For this purpose, on May 15, a so-called mass redundancy notice was reported to the authorities.
This was followed by a one-month discharge until June 15, no exceptions were allowed. Accordingly, effective dismissals are only possible in mid-June, so the view of the works council.
“If you have already dismissed before this time, they may be ineffective under the Employment Protection Act,” the employment agency warned in her letter, quoted by the works council in his leaflet.
The redundancy scheme is considered by the works council and IG Metall to be too extensive, because more people would be sent home than necessary for redevelopment.
The employee representatives had already enforced in early May that the severance package will not be applied at least during the current month. The letter was “a slap in the face of the management’s approach in terms of severance payments and termination agreements,” wrote the works council.
Rüsselsheim carmaker: Opel relies on temporary workers – and thus incensed the IG Metall
However, the company disagreed with the opinion of the works council, according to which Opel had made a formal error against the Federal Employment Agency. The representation of the works council is incomplete and rip statements out of context, said a company spokesman.
The cited letter from the Employment Agency assumes that the termination of the termination agreements does not give rise to any notifiable dismissals under the Employment Protection Act. “The procedure for the mass release notice we have agreed with the Employment Agency and carried out purely as a precaution and without legal obligations for the volunteer programs,” added the spokesman.
The early inclusion of authorities in important issues is common practice at Opel. The implementation of the volunteer programs was not affected in any way by the letters from the Federal Employment Agency, so there were no legal consequences.
The dispute with the works council is the first profound confrontation for the new labor director of Opel. Anke Felder had taken over the post until the beginning of May. She had come from the machine-builder Gea.
Crisising carmaker: Opel is accelerating faster than expected
Among experts, Opel’s first refurbishment steps under its new French parent company PSA (Peugeot, Citroën) are viewed critically. “PSA boss Tavares seems to be ready to make Opel profitable with many” golden handshakes “.
This degenerates Opel to a PSA shell, “criticized automotive professor Ferdinand Dudenhöffer from the University of Duisburg-Essen. The Eisenach and Kaiserslautern plants and the headquarters in Rüsselsheim to the present extent would not be needed for the PSA business model.
The car expert makes it the trade union criticism of the over-extensive compensation programs at Opel own. Works Council and IG Metall fear a clear cut in the German plants with about 19,000 employees. The jobs at the development center in Rüsselsheim are currently in danger, with currently more than 7,000 jobs.
The new, developed on PSA platforms SUV models Crossland and Grandland have so far achieved little sales success, notes Dudenhöffer. On the German market, the sold under the direction of the old owner General Motors developed cars better.
Opel also had to support the new models with about 40 percent self-registrations, which reduces the profit per car. With no other manufacturer, there is such a high proportion of self-registrations.
The statements of the university professor contradicted a company spokesman. There are more than 190,000 orders for the Crossland and Grandland models.
Opel also decided to avoid unprofitable sales channels. “We are successfully increasing the profitability of each car sold, even if at the expense of market share,” the spokesman continued.
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