Status: 21.10.2021 12:39 p.m.
Unrest in Rüsselsheim: The French parent company Stellantis supposedly wants to outsource the Opel plant and relocate development capacities to Morocco. What does this mean for the future of the Opel brand?
Thousands of “Opelans” are worried. Especially at the Rüsselsheim location, they fear for their jobs – since the recently announced plans of the Stellantis mother to separate the Rüsselsheim and Eisenach production plants from the German unit Opel. “Many employees are totally frustrated,” says one trade unionist.
Developer jobs in Morocco?
The engineers at the development center in Rüsselsheim are also afraid of deforestation. Supposedly they are said to have threatened their superiors with the relocation of tasks to Morocco. In an internal communication from the Opel works council to the employees, developers complained that they had been put under pressure in staff appraisals. They were told that they were too expensive and that their activities would be relocated to Morocco.
In fact, Stellantis is planning to expand its Moroccan plant in Kenitra. Hundreds of jobs for top engineers and technicians are to be created this year. The number of employees should rise from 2500 to 3000, according to the newspaper “Daily Morocco”. The Morocco plans also startled the regional media. “Opel jobs in Morocco in the future?” Asked the “Darmstädter Echo”. And the “Frankfurter Neue Presse” warned against “further dismantling” of Opel.
IG Metall threatens “hard conflict”
The unions reacted with concern. “The Stellantis Group should be aware that outsourcing and product relocations will not be accepted without resistance,” said Jörg Köhlinger, district chief of IG Metall Mitte and member of the Opel supervisory board. He threatened Stellantis with “a hard conflict”.
The Stellantis Group is trying to enforce product decisions and location assignments through the back door in a completely non-transparent manner in order to bypass tariff and co-determination structures, he said tagesschau.de. Obviously, additional capacities should be built up for the start-up of the new Grandland model outside of Eisenach in order to be able to put the respective workforce under pressure. The car had to be built exclusively in Eisenach, demanded the trade union representative, Rudolf Luz. The Grandland is already partially manufactured in France.
CGM warns of the end of the Opel brand
The less influential Christian trade union CGM criticizes the Stellantis plans even more sharply. She fears the end of the Opel brand. The outsourcing of production in Rüsselsheim and Eisenach means that the plants will have to compete with other locations around the world in the future. Orders for models are only given for those that have the lowest costs. It is then to be feared that the Rüsselsheim location will be too expensive. Should Opel then only be built abroad, sales on the German home market are likely to collapse. Stellantis boss Carlos Tavares could manage to bury the brand in the next two years. He is only concerned with costs.
Politicians are now also alarmed. The Prime Ministers of Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Thuringia wrote a fire letter to Tavares. They asked for more information and a return to trustworthy communication about the current situation of the company and its locations in Rüsselsheim, Kaiserslautern and Eisenach.
Back on the winning track
Opel seemed to be on the right track. After 20 years in the red, the brand with the lightning bolt turned the corner in 2017. Since the company, which belonged to General Motors (GM) for years, was taken over by the Peugeot group Stellantis, things have been looking up. With models like the new Opel Astra, the company achieved small coups of success.
But the calm seems to have only lasted for a short time. The development center in Rüsselsheim has been undergoing restructuring since 2019. Around two years ago, part of the center was handed over to the service provider Segula Automotive. 700 employees migrated there. Since then, the number of employees has continued to shrink. This year, almost 300 more jobs are to be cut. 2650 jobs should then remain.
Dudenhöffer: The Rüsselsheim plant will lose its importance
Opel no longer has its own head of development. Maybe that’s why Michael Lohrscheller retired as Opel boss in September, insiders rumored. His successor, Uwe Hochgeschurtz, is familiar with French companies. He was previously with Renault Germany for years.
Auto expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer speculates that Hochgeschurtz will concentrate on sales at Opel, as once at Renault Germany. Paris will do the rest. The plan of Stellantis boss Tavares could be to keep the one million Opel cars and at the same time save development costs, says Dudenhöffer. It remains to be seen whether this will go well. Opel has a difficult time in Stellantis’ “branded salad”. Dudenhöffer anticipates that the plant in Rüsselsheim will become significantly smaller in the future and possibly disappear one day.