Opel protests

Workers at all four German plants walked out and joined picketers positioned outside the gates at factories in Bochum, Eisenach, Kaiserslautern and Ruesselsheim to underscore their concern that thousands of jobs may be lost.

Opel employees were dismayed by an announcement by their parent company, General Motors, that a plan to sell the struggling carmaker to Canadian auto parts supplier Magna and the Russian lender, Sberbank, had been reversed at the last minute.

The next few weeks could turn nasty for the two sides after the Opel works council said that, under the circumstances, it would reject wage cuts as a way to salvage the company. GM responded, saying in that case, it would take Opel into bankruptcy.

"Balderdash" and "bad for business"

Speaking to an estimated 10,000 employees at the Ruesselsheim plant, Opel works council chief, Klaus Franz, said he wanted to see Opel, which is currently a limited liability company, turned into a full-fledged corporation with stockholders.

"We do not want to be an appendage ruled by Detroit," Franz said, accusing GM of arrogance and mismanagement, while ignoring the interests of European customers. He said the wrong models had triggered the crisis.

Franz also called GM threats to force Opel into bankruptcy "balderdash" and "bad for business."

The state premier of Hesse, Roland Koch, told the crowd that "we want Opel to have a future in Germany and Europe." While predicting tough weeks of negotiations ahead, Koch said "we will not be pulled apart. Opel is good and Opel must stay put."

Armin Schild, the head of the IG Metalworkers local union in Frankfurt, said Opel employees were going to send a signal throughout the company with a wave of protests across Europe planned for Friday.

He stressed that the German union would step up to support the interests of all Opel employees everywhere in Europe. Schild said the union would not allow GM to drive governments and Opel workers into what he called "a provincial plant location poker, playing both sides against one another."

Opel operates plants in Germany, Belgium, Austria, Britain, Poland, Italy, Spain and Hungary.

Schild was highly critical of General Motors, saying it was "unimaginable" that GM would be able to execute Opel's necessary restructuring.

"Anybody who plays with the future of tens of thousands of workers is acting irresponsibly," he said, adding that the union stood by its demand that no plants be closed.

Strike may be illegal

The plan to coordinate Europe-wide protests against GM is a controversial strategy. Legal experts are already questioning whether the law allows industrial action against the parent company.

Hagen Lesch, from the Institute for German Business (IW), noted that it was "theoretically permissible to strike against plant closures. The law allows this."

"But, in the case of Opel, there is a different situation: here, a strike is being called to protest against GM not selling Opel and therefore against a business decision. This is a tricky issue," he said.

In such an instance, Lesch emphasized, an employee could be given notice by his employer for acting illegally in a manner that was damaging to the company.

Andreas Priebe, from the union-affiliated Hans-Boeckler Foundation, mostly agreed with this assessment. "From a purely juridical point of view, calling a strike is questionable," he said. "But morally, this is a hardship case. The courts will have to decide whether it's legal or not."

gb/dpa/AP/AFP

Editor: Deanne Corbett