Occupy Vauxhall/Opel plants – nationalise GM Europe to defend jobs!
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Occupy Vauxhall/Opel plants – nationalise GM Europe to defend jobs!
General Motors plans to close the Opel plant in Antwerp, Belgium this
winter, with the loss of more than 2,300 jobs.
Workers in Antwerp occupied the factory’s parking lot yesterday in
protest at the closure decision, telling the world that new Astras
would be ‘kept hostage’, and prevented from leaving the plant.
On January 28, GM is due to inform the EU trade unions of all the
details of its restructuring plan at a special meeting.
Armin Schild, head of the IG Metall union in Frankfurt and a member of
Opel’s board, yesterday criticised GM for lacking a clear and
thoroughly financed restructuring concept and said: ‘Now, GM is
apparently off on the next horror trip.’
He criticised GM for mismanaging the company for 15 years and called
the planned closure of the site in Antwerp ‘a declaration of war
against all European Opel employees’.
At the January 28th meeting, Opel CEO Nick Reilly is expected to
announce up to 8,300 redundancies, in Germany, Spain, Poland, Hungary
and the UK, while underlining that no plant is safe ‘in a shrinking
European auto market’.
He is set to state that very major concessions on wages, jobs,
productivity, flexibility and pensions are required, on a permanent
basis, to stand a chance of avoiding more plant closures in the near
future.
The reality is that workers leaders are to be told that their members
will be pushed to build up huge car stocks, before they are sacked and
production is moved to Asia, or Eastern Europe.
Reilly announced last week that the company will cut 8,300 jobs across
Europe, including 4,000 in Germany, and close the plant in Antwerp –
casualties of the ‘tough reality’ of a shrinking European auto market.
The head of the workers council at Opel’s plant in the western German
city of Bochum, Rainer Einenkel, said yesterday that there would be
further plant closures, sackings and wage cuts ahead.
‘The worst is not over,’ he told German trade unionists.
Representatives from Opel’s European work councils and unions are to
meet next Tuesday in Antwerp.
GM says Opel needs to cut its production capacity by 20 per cent to
remain viable and is looking for state aid to help fund its 3.3bn
euros restructuring programme.
In the UK, GM is to cut 354 jobs at its Vauxhall plant in Luton, and
has stated that there will be no job cuts at its Ellesmere Port plant,
which makes the Vauxhall Astra.
However, there is no guarantee that either of the two plants will
remain open after 2012, while the terms and conditions of employment
are being changed at both plants, to push up the rate of exploitation
of the workforce.
As well, GM has also failed to sell its Swedish car brand Saab and is
starting to wind down the operation, and sack 3,400 workers.
The European trade unions at their meeting next Tuesday must decide to
fight to keep Antwerp open and not to accept the huge job cuts, wage
cuts and speed-ups that GM is demanding throughout Europe.
There must be strike action throughout Europe and all of the Opel
plants must be occupied.
Since the bankrupt GM cannot manage a European motor car industry, the
GM plants must be nationalised and be put under workers’ control.
This is the only way to defend jobs.
Similarly, in the UK workers must occupy the two plants and demand
that they be nationalised under workers’ control. The Unite leadership
which supports the Brown government is opposed to nationalisation and
thinks that workers must just accept whatever is on offer from the
bosses.
Such leaders must be removed and replaced by leaders who will take
action to defend jobs.
The meeting of the European trade unions next Tuesday is the
opportunity to unite to defend every GM job and plant in Europe.