Netherlands: government key in prompting BMW to takeover the Nedcar auto plant

The withdrawal of the Japanese carmaker, Mitsubishi, planned for the end of 2012, gave way to a rather special agreement: the 1,500 staff of the Nedcar plant will receive 100 percent of their salary for two years, instead of 70 percent, before BMW reopens. (Ref. 120453)
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This extraordinary agreement is the result of a long union struggle to maintain employment in the Netherlands’ last car plant, which still employed 5,000 people in 2000. Maxime Verhagen, Minister of Economic Affairs, put himself out to find a buyer when, on February 6, 2012, Mitsubishi Motors Corporation (MMC) announced that it was leaving. Unions insisted so that employment at the Born factory, Limburg, be saved. In 2006, a “mobility center” helped quickly redeploy 1,000 Nedcar employees af

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