GM may grant Opel workers stake

[rickaren]

GM may grant Opel workers stake to secure concessions

Posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 2:17 PM EST. (Employee News)

General Motors Co. is considering granting workers at the Adam Opel GmbH division a stake in the unit as the biggest U.S. automaker seeks to secure a deal on labor concessions in Europe, Bloomberg reported.

An employee shareholding, along with profit sharing and the division’s conversion into a German joint-stock company “can be part of the final settlement,” Nick Reilly, the acting chief of the unit, said today at a press briefing at Opel headquarters in the Frankfurt suburb of Ruesselsheim, Bloomberg said. GM decided last month against selling Opel to Magna International Inc. and instead plans a 3.3 billion-euro ($5 billion) reorganization of the unprofitable unit that would be financed mainly by European Union nations, the story said.

Swedish Industry Minister Maud Olofsson, who led the meeting of her EU counterparts with Reilly, said before the gathering that GM won’t be permitted to receive assistance that kept jobs in one nation at the expense of employees elsewhere in the bloc, the news service said. “We will not allow GM to go to each and every country to negotiate about state aid,” Olofsson told reporters in Brussels today. The EU must “stick to the rules — no state-aid race,” the story said. (Bloomberg)