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GM Succeeds in Pitting European Workers Against One Another (Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany)


May 30, 2012 by

Some see it as the normal gears of capitalism at work, and others call it U.S. style union-busting invasion and a race to the bottom. Whatever you call it, columnist Thomas Fromm of Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung writes that in GM’s world, ‘it is every man for himself.’

For the Sueddeutsche Zeitung Thomas Frommstarts off this way:

All Opel’s management could do was announce the decision. Starting in 2015, the Astra, the car manufacturer’s bread-and-butter, will be built in Britain and Poland — and not at headquarters in Rüsselsheim.

For Opel workers in Germany, this is a dire warning: Your own parent company General Motors has successfully pitted you against your counterparts in Great Britain.

For weeks, executives in Detroit have been debating various locations. In the end, it was from their British colleagues that the company was able to wrest the biggest pay cuts. Ninety four percent of workers there decided to play ball and agreed to the dictates of Detroit. Now they have been rewarded with the Astra, along with millions of dollars in new investment and 700 new jobs. It is a dubious victory.

Not the best workers – but the cheapest – were the ones that won the bid. The GM Group is pursuing internal wage-dumping. … In GM’s world, it is every man for himself.


READ ON IN ENGLISH OR GERMAN AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

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7 Comments

  1. RP
    May 30, 2012 | 11:32 pm

    Seems like Government Motors is fighting with itself. The part not owned by the federal governments of the US (60.8%) and Canada (11.7%) is owned by the United auto workers of America and Canada (17.5%).

    Strange decision.

  2. rudi
    May 31, 2012 | 6:20 am

    Don’t feel sorry for the German’s. Their home country workers are unionized, but US workers are not unionized in the Southern states.
    http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2011/12/next-uaw-target-mercedes-benz-volkwagen-in-the-us/1#.T8dFS9VYuRY

  3. Quelcrist Falconer
    May 31, 2012 | 8:37 am

    Rudi,

    you can’t blame the Germans for American’s idiocy…

  4. WordPress
    May 31, 2012 | 1:45 pm

    What’s wrong with those German workers? Don’t they know it’s either make money or be gone. GM has lost about 13 billion of dollars for the last 12 years and those workers think things can stay as is. They are lucking GM stuck in there all those year. Maybe they think the USA workers can carry them.

  5. WordPress
    May 31, 2012 | 1:50 pm

    Rudi,

    you can’t blame the Germans for American’s idiocy…

    —————————————–

    Rudy, the only American idiocy is having carried these workers for over a decade. Isn’t GM in business to make money? I don’t think GM is a company this gives charity.

  6. slamfu
    May 31, 2012 | 3:06 pm

    I’m a big fan of unions with their warts and all. I firmly believe they not only were a primary driving force in making the middle class standards of living decent, and helping the economy as a whole, but in the 20th century they were a powerful force in bring about safety regulations that have cut workplace fatalities by 99% since the early part of the 20th Century.

    But unions can and do over reach in some areas. The American Auto unions were one such case. There comes a point when you can’t wring any more money out of the bosses without driving the company out of business. Now, GM made its own bed with its choices on what vehicles to push last decade, but the unions played a large role in making costs so high they couldn’t compete. They have finally come to their senses with the near destruction of GM, and it appears the German counterparts think that there is no need for changes. I’ll call companies out for shameless profit taking, but GM and other auto manufacturers run on a REALLY tight profit margin and have for awhile now. Sometimes its in the unions best interests to back off a bit. This is one of them.

  7. ShannonLeee
    June 1, 2012 | 6:26 pm

    It looks like Germans need to stop buying Opels.