After bargaining for more than a year, the management of Opel and the IG-Metall union have adopted a social plan covering the 3,300 Opel workers affected by the closing of the Bochum plant, to take place on December 31, 2014. The 16-page deal was presented on Monday, June 16 to the plant’s workers at a meeting of the staff. Already signed by the management, it still needs the approval of the IG-Metall’s management, on Friday or Monday, as well as the green light from the “conciliation committee,” which will meet on June 25. In total, €552 million will be dedicated to compensation and the creation of a transfer company that will take care, for 2 years, of redeploying the workers laid off. The IG-Metall said it got “the best possible deal given the current circumstances.”
The IG-Metall is deeply divided. The adoption of this social plan puts an end to a rather uncommon conflict between the management of the IG-Metall and Opel’s central WC on one hand and the WC of the Bochum factory on the other (see article No. 130208). In March 2013, unlike workers at the Rüsselsheim, Kaiserslautern and Eisenach plants, 75 percent of the 3,300 employees of the Bochum factory rejected the “rescue” deal negotiated at the end of February by Opel management, the company’s...
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