GM Agrees to Keep Three Opel Plants Open Through 2018

Opels being assembled in Eisenach, Germany

Just a few days after new GM CEO Mary Barra visited Opel's headquarters in Ruesselsheim and said the company's plant there will be assigned a new vehicle to build, General Motors' Opel unit has come to an agreement with the company's labor unions to extend until the end of 2018 a no-layoff guarantee at three German plants. Included with the Ruesselsheim factory, plants at Kaiserslautern and Eisenach will remain open. Opel also announced that the Eisenach assembly plant will build the next generation Opel Adam and Corsa models. Approximately 7,150 employees work at the three factories.

Production ends later this year at Opel's fourth German factory in Bochum.

The agreement is a hopeful sign of better labor relations at Opel. Management and labor have differed in the recent past about how to return GM's European unit to profitability.

"For the company and its employees this is an important step toward securing our future," Ulrich Schumacher, Opel's head of personnel, said in a statement.

In the labor deal, Opel promised to add another model for Ruesselsheim to build, to continue making the Adam and Corse in Eisenach and to keep the Kaiserslautern component operations going.

GM has lost an estimated $18 billion on its European operations over the last 12 years. The company says that it's on track to break even in Europe in 2015 after a redesigned Corsa subcompact is launched late this year, and a redesigned Astra concept is introduced next year along with new gasoline and diesel engines.

from The Truth About Cars http://ift.tt/Jh8LjA

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