Vauxhall plant may lose 1,000 jobs
RUESSELSHEIM, Germany (Reuters) - General Motors Europe has proposed cutting nearly 1,000 jobs this year at its Ellesmere Port, Cheshire plant to improve productivity for the Opel/Vauxhall Astra model, GME President Carl-Peter Forster said on Wednesday.
He said the carmaker was negotiating with labour representatives who wanted to spread production cuts over other GM plants in Europe that make the Astra compact, but that the idea was "not super-attractive.
"This just delays a real solution," he said on the sidelines of a ceremony opening GM Europe's design centre.
He declined to give an exact timetable for making a decision, saying only, "We won't debate this for weeks.
Plants at Antwerp, Belgium, and Bochum, Germany, also build the Astra, which was GM's best-selling vehicle in Europe last year but typically sees sales decline as the model ages.
Forster said GME was intent on boosting productivity at the current Astra plants, which he said had improved but was not at benchmark levels.
"We want to take the opportunity now to part with workers whom we will not need in future," he said, noting Britain's more flexible labour market argued for making job cuts there.
Klaus Franz, who heads GM Europe's employee council, told reporters that workers at the other plants were prepared to work more flexible hours or make other concessions to help absorb reduced Astra production.
"There is no way to get around adjusting volumes but how to do it is a different matter," Franz said. He suggested linking the issue to a package of measures governing manufacture of the next generation of Astra, which is due for launch in 2010.
GM Europe is supposed to decide early next year which plants will build the next-generation model, and workers are keen to ensure it does not close any plants or adopt forced layoffs.
The three current plants plus Trollhattan, Sweden, and Gliwice, Poland, are in the running.
Any British job losses would follow last month's decision by French carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen to close its central England plant next year, eliminating 2,300 jobs, and the collapse of MG Rover last year.
On other subjects, Forster said GM had not yet decided whether to export Astras from Europe to North America to be marketed under its sister brand Saturn.
"What is important is to create the conditions to be able to do this," he said, then judge whether market conditions were ripe to proceed with the idea.
