Opel car workers remain on unofficial strike

Angry workers at an Opel car plant in Germany remained on unofficial strike today, continuing their protest against plans by parent company General Motors for thousands of job cuts and defying calls from union leaders and the government to return to work.

Employee representatives at the plant in Bochum, where workers stopped production on Thursday, had demanded assurances that there will be no compulsory layoffs as a condition for today’s early shift resuming work. Worker representative Franco Biagiotti said they were sticking to that demand.

“We will fight on and we will show the company our teeth,” he said to applause from workers gathered at the factory gate. “We have nothing to lose and we are securing a good starting position for negotiations.”

Biagiotti claimed a lack of parts supplied from Bochum would lead to stoppages at GM plants elsewhere in Europe. However, GM Europe spokesman Ruediger Assion said that “our plants in the rest of Europe are working”.

While the Bochum stoppage continued, employee representatives and management opened talks at Opel headquarters in Ruesselsheim on the company’s plans in Germany.

GM announced last week that it will cut 12,000 jobs in Europe by the end of 2006 – mostly in Germany – under a cost-cutting programme for its money-losing Opel, Vauxhall and Saab operations.

The company said it had yet to determine which factories would be hit but management has singled out the ageing Bochum plant, in the industrial Ruhr region, as having a ”competitiveness issue.”