On October 14, workers at the Opel General Motors plant in the small German town of Bochum on the Ruhr downed tools in a "wild-cat strike" against the management's massive to cut wages and other benefits. of a population of 40,000. and 10,000 across Germany (4000 in work in order to negotiate that sites and oppose compulsory job losses as such workers at the Opel plant. VN: The suggestion that Opel has problems because of mistakes by management is inadequate. The company is conducting a war for the highest profits at the expense of employees.
FH: Analysts argue three things:- Firstly, there is no crisis in the international automobile industry, however there have been mistakes made by General Motors (GM) management in Europe. Secondly, GM is making a loss, in the autoindustry, particularly in Europe. Thirdly, there is no way to avoid a massive reduction in the workforce in onslaught on jobs and at the same time On October 17 as part of a European day of action against these attacks 20,000 people took to the streets of Bochum out 4000 jobs are under threat in the town, Russelsheim and 2000 at Kaiserlautern). The leadership of IG Metall, the union in the plant urged the workers to return to production will continue across all the redundancies - but without opposing the Here WINNIE WOLF talks to some of the
Europe. FT: In fact, with 52 million units considerably more cars will be built in 2004 than in 2003. In 2005 it should be 54 million. However, the market is becoming more restricted and the competition fiercer. In the last 15 years about a dozen manufacturers have lost their independence: Saab, Subaru, Isuzu and Daewoo are part of GM; Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover and Mazda are with Ford; Alfa and Lancia have been integrated into Fiat, Nissan into Renault and Kia into Hyundai. Several manufac-