No Compulsory Redundancies, Plant Closures As Part of Opel Restructuring

By Agence France-Presse The drastic cost-saving and restructuring program being implemented at loss-making German car maker Opel will not entail any compulsory redundancies or plant closures, executives of U.S. parent company General Motors Corp. and unions agreed on Wednesday. After weeks of negotiations, management and employee representatives agreed that the 10,000 jobs being cut in Germany as part of a wider 500-million-euro ($668 million) cost-cutting drive would be implemented without forced redundancies, the head of Opel's general works council, Klaus Franz, said. "Our joint aim is for the restructuring to be socially compatible and to create fair conditions for the allocation of production capacity in Europe in the future," Franz said. Employee representatives said that a large number of the job cuts would be implemented by transferring employees to special employment companies co-funded by the Federal Labor Agency. For the rest, employees would be offered early retirement or voluntary redundancies. Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2004