Written guarantees demanded the Opel works council in the deal between GM and PSA – and threatened with strikes. Now, the executive and employee side of the German car company agree. There is hardly anything achieved.
picture alliance / dpa
Employee at Opel
Thursday, 06.04.2017
17:21 clock
Two weeks ago, it seemed to be high on the sale of Opel to the French carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroën. Court firm guarantees demanded Opel works council boss Wolfgang Schäfer-Klug in the middle of March of the previous parent company General Motors (GM) and otherwise threatened strikes.
Now the grudge seems miraculously gone. At works meetings this Thursday at all Opel locations, the board, the works council and the union showed IG metal Some. There were hardly any new successes to report.
The GM subsidiary has made preparations for the takeover by the French competitor PSA: All European activities of Opel and their British sister Vauxhall, which were previously partly divided by GM in various companies, are now to be merged under one roof under company law. This should make it easier for PSA to take over.
The co-determination rights of the employees should be preserved, as well as the collective agreements, insured Opel and celebrated works council like IG Metall. However, from the perspective of experts, these were hardly at risk within the Opel network in Germany – even after a PSA takeover.
Even otherwise, Opel could only repeat previously made commitments from PSA and GM. The agreements on the pension plans remain in place. The Rüsselsheim automaker affirmed the production commitments made so far. Accordingly, the successor of the compact SUV Mokka X is to be built in 2019 in the factory in Eisenach. In Rüsselsheim from the end of the decade, a big SUV roll off the line. All other agreements with the works council remained valid. This includes the future utilization of the development center in Rüsselsheim.
No guarantees beyond 2020
PSA boss Carlos Tavares had emphasized on Wednesday also at the top discussion with the federal government in Berlin again that the French auto company with the planned assumption of the mark Opel would take over the GM before given location and employment promises. In addition, Tavares did not go there, and also Opel could not announce any news here at the company meetings. The given PSA commitments include a waiver of redundancies until the end of 2018 and, by 2020, safety for all Opel sites. After that everything is open for Opel.
PSA had agreed a few weeks ago with General Motors, the acquisition of Opel, The French carmaker thus moves up to number two among Europe’s automakers behind VW. Across Europe, the company then has a good 38,000 employees. More than half work in Germany, especially in Rüsselsheim, Kaiserslautern and Eisenach.
In a letter to the Opel workforce, Works Council leader Schäfer-Klug on March 24 demanded court-firm guarantees from General Motors (GM) that the commitments given when selling the GM subsidiary were actually complied with. In the other case, he threatened with strikes. He complained that the promises made by PSA were previously given only orally. Written, contractually binding guarantees, the two auto companies want to give only after the sale. Therefore, Schäfer-Klug wanted this from the previous Opel mother. At the will of the US company to he has “considerable doubt,” warned Schäfer-Klug.
“In my view, the positive image of GM that Dan Akerson and Steve Girsky have built in Europe towards the workforce and employee representatives who have built politics and publicity is jeopardized by the current GM leadership,” warned the Opel works council chief executive at the end of March.
Now, however, the sound sounded very different. “We are glad that we have achieved that the workforce today could be comprehensively informed about the upcoming steps”, said Schäfer-Klug now only.