London, Nov 29 (PRINTWORDS NEWS) -
The 25000 strong workforce of General Motors who are involved in Germany at Opel are going to get a Christmas bonus worth £3,600. This comes at a time when their colleagues at UK’s Vauxhall production plants will have to put up with a 5% reduction in remuneration. However, GM is likely to lay off near about 5000 employees in Germany. Contrary to what was expected, a few hundred workers engaged at Vauxhall’s van production unit at Luton will lose their jobs. The fate of the 2500 employees working at Chesire’s Ellesmere Port plant has changed for better. GM Europe has announced that no employee from that plant will be shown the door. The carmaker also has aggressive plans to increase the production capacity of the Ellesmere Port plant. It needs to decide the future of the Luton Plant when the joint venture van production comes to an end in the near future.
As one can expect, Thousands of employees working at Opel Germany will lose their jobs and this has made them furious. An agreement between Canadian automotive accessories giant Magna and GM did not materialize and the workers feel that the deal if successful could have resulted in fewer layoffs. It was because of this agreement the workers at Opel Germany agreed for a Christmas Bonus leaving aside a pay hike. When the deal did not work out, the Unions at Opel insisted that under the circumstances the company should not step back from paying the Christmas Bonus.
As a matter of fact, GM has agreed to churn out the money owing to the stringent German laws that makes the employers follow the agreements. GM is going to make a large number of Opel workers jobless on the ground of inefficiency compared with its British workforce. According to the company sources, the two plants of the company in UK are far more productive than the 4 plants in Germany combined.
The auto industry insiders are sure that the ailing US carmaker has bounced back after going through a lean phase earlier this year. General Motors, along with rival Chryslar applied for bankruptcy protection. However, within a few months of that incident the company has agreed to pay the £90 million bonus to its Germany based workers. Now it seems that the major carmakers have crossed past the worst phase and they are expected to make profits by 2011. It is true that overall car sales has taken a nosedive in the UK post the global economic meltdown but the sales in Asian countries have proved to be beneficial for carmakers like GM and Ford.
In January this year China became the biggest car market of the world, zooming past USA. It sold more than 10 million cars. GM like other struggling car makers is trying to tap the potential in the foreign countries like China where the market shows strong growth prospect. GM has ambitious plans for China and that includes an investment of £600 million per year for launching several new and revamped models in the country. The rivals like Volkswagen and Ford are also trying joint ventures with Chinese carmakers.
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