-Caveat Lector-
<<This plant was very close to where we lived in Germany, actually at
or near the intersection of AutoBahns 3 and 67, west of Frankfurt,
just north of Massa, if memory serves correctly. The article serves
to illustrate a shifting away from socially concerned industry to a
paradigm of "for profit" only manufacturing works. This is similar
to the shift being brought about by WalMart's absorption of Wertkauf,
one of the larger 'department' store chains throughout Germany.
A<>E<>R >>
>
>
> World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
>
>
> WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : Germany
>
> German trade unions vote for job cuts
>
> New Opel (GM) plant in Rüsselsheim means 4,000 fewer jobs
>
> By Helmut Arens
> 18 June 1999
>
> Back to screen version
>
> In a press statement on May 26, Robert Hendry, the head of the board
> of directors for General Motors Germany, announced that the new Opel
> plant to be located in Rüsselsheim, Germany, would cost 820 million DM
> and employ 4,000 fewer workers and white-collar employees than the
> existing plant.
>
> This year parent company General Motors plans to start construction of
> one of the world's most modern auto plants on the present Rüsselsheim
> site with its century-long Opel tradition. Production will be based on
> the latest model of "streamlined production”, flexible, multi-skilled
> staff, constant quality control and "just in time” production methods
> in existence, up to now, only in the east German Eisenach factory. The
> old Rüsselsheim plant, which 20 years ago employed 43,000 workers, is
> no longer viable and will be totally demolished.
>
> The new fabrication line will be erected in close proximity to the old
> site; the installation for the body works and the finishing assembly
> line are to be finished by 2002, the new paint works some time later.
>
> Wolfgang Strinz from the Opel board of directors told the Frankfurter
> Rundschau that per vehicle production costs in the old factory at
> Rüsselsheim were 35 percent higher than in Eisenach. The "Eisenach
> model” was developed when General Motors took over the Wartburg works
> following the collapse of East Germany, closed it down, and set up the
> world's most modern manufacturing vehicle plant employing fewer than
> one-third of the 10,000 original Wartburg work force.
>
> Workers in the new Opel plant will face completely transformed
> conditions. Although group work has already been implemented, the
> management also wants to retain three-shift operations. Where
> previously two separate assembly lines were in place for the Vectra
> and Omega auto models, future operations will be constructed on a
> single line in which a 40 percent productivity increase is to be
> reached producing the same annual total of 275,000 vehicles. The
> 10,500 workers at present employed in the fabrication plant will be
> cut to 6,500, and more and more pressure will be placed upon them.
>
> Rudolf Müller, works council president, spoke positively about the
> decision, telling the press it had long been awaited. The
> representatives of the work force had been demanding a complete
> overhaul of production methods. To be sure, he "regretted” that 4,000
> fewer workers would be employed in 2002, but the new plant was the
> only correct option and the old works had no future. He maintained
> that job cuts would not entail direct redundancies, but would be
> carried through by the more socially acceptable methods of not
> replacing workers who retired or encouraging older workers to leave
> through early retirement. But even if this is the case, it means that
> ever-fewer workers will be producing under increasingly stressful
> conditions, while a growing army of unemployed is put on the street.
>
> In a recent agreement on maintaining the site, management and the
> works council expanded the early retirement scheme and pension rules
> for employees of the original Opel plant. Fifty-eight-year-old workers
> can volunteer for the pension and 57-year-old workers as well as
> 60-year-old white collar employees are eligible for a part-time
> pension.
>
> Opel trade union works council members and representatives of IG
> Metall (the metal workers union) took part in an international works
> council convention in Detroit on the last weekend in May. Opel was
> represented by Müller, his deputy Klaus Franz and
> IG-Metall-functionary Thomas Klebe. (All three are members of the
> board of directors.) At present General Motors has plans to set up
> rationalised production methods in Canada and in the US, where
> downsizing will occur.
>
> The German works council members concluded that General Motors should
> be urged to develop a method to secure jobs over a longer period of
> time. They argued that with the help of modern technical innovation,
> quality work and a highly motivated staff it must be possible to win
> back a greater share of the world market. To effect this it was
> necessary to tie the interests of the firm to national commercial
> considerations. Müller said an all-round strategy was not only in the
> interests of defending jobs but also of capital because, in an
> international game of global players, only those who took into account
> the peculiarities of the national market could survive.
>
> For this reason the Rüsselsheim works committee had supported the
> appointment of Robert Hendry to Germany and the removal of production
> chief Peter Hanenberger. Hanenberger championed the General Motors
> headquarters-favoured concept of a "universal world car”—highly
> rationalised and cheap to produce—while the works council preferred
> the concept of the typical German Opel nurtured by the new boss
> Hendry—the concept of a nationally distinct product with its
> established standard of quality.
>
> Emulating junior partners in management, the union and the works
> council strive to give advice on how to survive in the world market
> and compete more successfully. They criticise the structures at
> General Motors as "too encrusted” to carry through necessary changes
> (Thomas Klebe, IG Metall).
>
> The works council has already been involved in disciplining the work
> force: in Rüsselsheim, Bochum, Kaiserslautern and Eisenach, where the
> Christmas bonus has been coupled with the number of sick days used,
> they participated in hounding sick workers. In recent times the union
> has paved the way for agreements that introduced permanent night-shift
> and weekend work.
>
> However, with the latest decision, IG Metall and the works council
> have gone a step further: with massive funds being invested in the new
> plant, they have agreed to a 5.3 percent reduction of the wage costs
> and the destruction of 4,000 jobs over the next four years.
>
> “What was the alternative?” said Klaus Franz in the Detroit News. “To
> shut down Rüsselsheim. That was the alternative. It is hard, very
> hard, but that is reality.” He played up the threat that production
> could be shifted to Gliwice in Poland, where General Motors will set
> up production of the car models Astra and Corsa in three years. IG
> Metall has no answer to this threat.
>
> The fact that the convention in Detroit took the first step in the
> direction of an international works council and Rudolf Müller's
> appointment as president of the European works council have not
> resulted in growing solidarity between workers at Opel and General
> Motors—quite the contrary. The international works council will assist
> the world combine in setting up Eisenach-type production lines in
> Poland and Rüsselsheim, in Michigan and Ohio in the US as well as
> Argentina, Brazil and China to attain maximum profits with minimal
> production costs.
>
> The American press held up as a model the agreement of the Opel works
> council and IG Metall to slash 4,000 jobs. The Detroit News wrote on
> May 26, “Whoever wants to know what the United Auto Workers and
> General Motors has prepared for the future, look at Germany ... the
> leaders of the IG Metall, the powerful union representing German
> workers, faced for 18 months the same dilemma now confronting the UAW:
> fewer jobs or none.”
>
> The paper concludes that in a globally integrated enterprise there can
> be only one exclusive entrepreneurial concept, applicable all over the
> world. “In Rüsselsheim, only ninety minutes by air from markets in
> Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, they have understood this.”
>
>
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
>
> Copyright 1998-99
> World Socialist Web Site
> All rights reserved
>
>
A<>E<>R
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