German automaker Opel to cut workers’ hours and pay

Dietmar Gaisenkersting 

Last Thursday the German business magazine WirtschaftsWoche [Business Week] reported that automaker Opel is preparing to introduce short-time work at its headquarters in Rüsselsheim.

Short-time work is defined by the European Union as "a temporary reduction in working time... It can involve either a partial reduction in the normal working week for a limited period of time – for instance a partial suspension of the employment contract – or a temporary layoff, such as a full suspension of the employment contract."

The report states that the WiWo editors read the minutes of a confidential meeting held by representatives of the IG Metall trade union.

Opel workers go to an employee meeting in Ruesselsheim, Germany on Monday [Credit: AP Photo/Michael Probst]

According to the minutes, Opel management is planning to introduce short-time work “from October for three months.” The short-time work will then be continued next spring.

The introduction of short-time work is part of a radical savings and cutback program, with which Opel’s parent company, French automaker Groupe PSA (Peugeot, Citroen), is responding to the global crisis in the auto industry. Faced with declining sales in major markets, increasing trade warfare and e-mobility, labor productivity and the exploitation of workers is set to increase dramatically.

In a previous article, the WSWS reported that 1,100 jobs at the three Opel plants in Rüsselsheim, Eisenach and Kaiserslautern are to be cut.

Opel workers, along with workers in other car factories and component suppliers, must prepare for a bitter struggle. This requires breaking the control of the corrupt factory councils and union bureaucracy and setting up independent action committees to establish contact with autoworkers in other companies and countries to organise joint resistance.

The offensive against workers will intensify following the current plant holiday shutdown. The planned short-time work will mean drastic financial losses. In the goods distribution center in Rüsselsheim, only 74 of 300 employees will remain. Some 200 are to be moved to Bochum. The rest will be stripped of their jobs via a social plan.

Opel’s European goods distribution center in Bochum, with 700 employees, supplies Opel and Vauxhall dealers throughout Europe with spare parts and accessories. The large Opel plant in Bochum—which employed 20,000 workers in the 1980s—was shut down five years ago in cooperation with IG Metall.

Now the workforce in Bochum is in the sights of CEO Carlos Tavares, who is intent on undertaking drastic restructuring and cost-cutting measures. In future, workers will no longer be paid according to the valid engineering contract. Instead they will be graded on the much lower contract for logistics workers. This means wage cuts of several hundred euros per month.

Volker Strehl from IG Metall in Bochum admitted that such measures were being negotiated. He pointed out that the union had already agreed to wage cuts in the current contract. “We have already made concessions,” he said.

Tavares and IG Metall are playing off the workforce at Opel Bochum against fellow workers in France and external service providers employed by the multi-brand manufacturer’s parts distribution company Distrigo. The PSA Group already uses Distrigo locations for spare parts and accessories. “Instead of supplying all trade outlets centrally as before from Bochum,” the Handelsblatt newspaper reported, “from January 2020 they will be increasingly supplied via the Distrigo Hubs in individual [German] federal states.”

In addition, Bochum also competes with the PSA parts warehouse in Vesoul, France, where costs are to be lowered significantly. Just recently, PSA and the French unions increased weekly working hours by about half an hour—with no additional pay.

The biggest source of contention stems from the partial takeover of Opel’s International Technical Development Center (ITEZ) by the French development service provider Segula. At the beginning of September, Segula will take over around 20 buildings, 120 engine and chassis dynamometers, and around 700 Opel employees. Segula will also take over the Opel test development area in Dudenhofen, as well as the company’s guarantee orders business.

Up to 3,000 Opel workers in Rüsselsheim are expected to lose their jobs. Originally, it was planned that 2,000 Opel workers would switch to the service provider Segula, but more than 1,300 preferred to quit Opel on the basis of severance payments, partial retirement or early retirement.