Job cuts
October 22, 2009
The Spanish trade unions CCOO and UGT and the Canadian-Austrian Magna consortium on Thursday reached a basic agreement on operations and job cuts at the Opel factory in Figueruelas, near Zaragoza, northern Spain.
Spanish Industry Minister Miguel Sebastian, who mediated in the talks, hailed the preliminary deal, saying "the future of the factory is guaranteed for 10 years."
The CCOO union said Magna had agreed to cut a maximum of 900 of the 7,500 jobs at the factory rather than the 1,300 it had sought when the talks began last week.
Facing staunch opposition from Spanish trade unions, Magna was also prepared to guarantee that the factory's workforce would remain untouched until the summer of 2011.
The unions said that Magna had also promised to maintain the bulk of the production at the Spanish site rather than shifting it to Germany.
"Magna is committed to maintaining two production lines and with production capacity of 478,000 units per year," the UGT union said.
Nonetheless, Spanish unions said they would uphold plans to hold two 48-hour strikes for late October and early November until they can vote on Thursday's deal - a move which is expected next week.
Deal or no deal?
Struggling US giant General Motors last month announced the sale of a majority stake in its European arm Opel to Magna and its partner, Russian state-owned lender Sberbank.
The deal for creating "New Opel" should have been finalized last week. But proceedings stalled after the European Commission raised objections, arguing that Germany's offer of 4.5 billion euros (6.6 billion dollars) in loans and credit guarantees could be in breach of EU competition rules.
Germany's bailout offer also drew sharp criticism from several EU countries which feared that Berlin was trying to secure preferential treatment from Magna over job cuts and plant closures. Magna is reportedly planning to cut 10,500 jobs across Europe.
nk/dpa/AFP/AP
Editor: Michael Lawton