Opel to Cut Jobs

Opel is a unit of General Motors Co. is  name that you may not be familiar with. Sadly this has not stopped the company from cutting back on workers and other things its workers rely upon in order to fix its balance sheet. The company will be getting cut back by about 30 percent of its overall staff.

The company put out a statement about the cuts that they are making to their workforce. For those of you who are not familiar with them here is a look at how the company describes its job cuts, “Rüsselsheim. In an agreement with the Works Council and IG Metall, today Opel announced short work for its Rüsselsheim facilities and Kaiserslautern component plant, starting September 2012.  The agreement includes 20 short work days for each of the facilities until the end of 2012…. Short work applies to manufacturing as well as to the central and administrative functions. In manufacturing, labor time will be reduced by short work shifts or short work days starting in September. In the administrative and service functions, short work days will be applied starting in October. Individual policies will apply in these functions. Engineering is not affected by short work. There are 13,800 employees working in Opel’s Rüsselsheim facilities, with 3,500 employees in manufacturing, 3300 in central and administrative functions and 7,000 in engineering. About 50 percent of the Rüsselsheim employees are affected by short work.”

Sadly, this is not the first time that the parent company, GM, turned to layoffs in order to make the balance sheet to the place that they want it to be. For those of you who are not familiar with the layoffs that the company made lays time here is a look at the layoffs from earlier in this year, “I t looks like more job cuts are coming to one of the biggest auto makers in the motor city. General Motors Co. is getting ready to make a double whammy of job cuts to the staff of their company. The first set of job cuts is coming to the company’s global research and development headquarters. The global research and development headquarters, which are located in Warren, will lose about 100 workers. The company will also make a second hit to its research and development teams in a different location. The company is getting ready to shut down their research and development facilities in Bangalore, India. For the time being we do not have an exact number of jobs to be cut from the facility in Bangalore, India it will likely be no small amount, as this event is a closure and not a layoff. These two cuts are both being billed as part of a much larger plan for the company, a global restructuring effort that is designed to being the company out of the cuts leaner and running on less overhead then they were before.”

For the time being there is no word about what kind of severance package, if any, the company is going to be giving to the workers who are going to be cut from the payrolls.