 Workers want management to negotiate |
Germany's economy minister has called on staff at the Opel car plant in Bochum to end a protest at General Motor's plans to cut 12,000 jobs. "It's clear this is also about Germany as a place to do business and it's clear that the reform process... has to go further," Wolfgang Clement said.
The redundancies, which will take place across Europe, are aimed at saving GM about 500m euros ($600m; �340m).
GM has not yet said which plants will be affected.
But GM Europe president Carl-Peter Forster singled out the Bochum plant in the west of the country as having a "competitiveness issue". Reform needed?
Germany has the second highest labour costs in the world after Norway, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
About 42% of gross wages goes to cover pension, health and unemployment insurance payments.
"Without doubt so-called non-wage labour costs play a very important role. We have to do everything we can to free labour from additional costs," Mr Clement said.
"This process has to go further."
He said he sympathised with those who had walked out, but that "work must resume".
'Negotiations needed'
Union officials have said 4,000 jobs will be lost at the plant which makes Zafira vans and Astra compacts.
Workers abandoned the plant on Thursday and those on the Friday shift followed suit.
German television showed footage of a truck driver who was unable to deliver a shipment at Bochum because employees had blocked the entrance.
Rainer Einenkel, representative of the strikers, has refused to say how long the strike will last.
He said management needs to negotiate over the factory's future and that when headway had been made, workers would return to work "immediately".
There were no work stoppages at Opel's other German plants in Ruesselsheim, near Frankfurt, in Kaiserslautern or in Eisenach.
In an interview in the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Friday, Fritz Henderson from GM Europe refused to rule out possible plant closures in the medium term.
"We won't close any factories between now and 2006. But after that, we can't guarantee anything," Mr Henderson said.
 | GM Europe Brands: Saab, Vauxhall, Opel Sales: 1.8m vehicles (2003) Employees: 63,000 Factories: 11 (Germany, Sweden, UK) Finances: $161m loss H1 2004 |
Falling profits
GM hopes the job cuts will help turn around its loss-making European division, which also includes Swedish car firm Saab and Vauxhall in the UK.
Detroit-based GM has said group profits rose to $440m in the three months to September, up slightly from $425m during the same period last year.
But the company cut its profits target for the full year, partly because of rising losses in Europe.
GM Europe, which has not made a profit for four years, lost $161m in the first half of 2004, up from $68m one year earlier, according to the latest figures.
GM said in a statement that its European restructuring plan "provides for the majority of the cuts to be in Germany, with a heavy emphasis on managing and engineering".
As well as Germany's Opel plants, GM has a main production site for Saab at Trollhaettan in Sweden.
GM also runs the Vauxhall plant at Ellesmere Port in the UK, where about 5,000 people work.
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We won't close any factories between now and 2006. But after that, we can't guarantee anything 
