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Fury on the streets as axe hovers over German workers
Thousands of Opel workers staged lightning strikes and angry protests across Germany yesterday after the sudden refusal by the car giant's American parent company, General Motors, to sell off its European operations.
The American decision took Germany completely by surprise. Chancellor Angela Merkel had assumed she had saved Opel through a €4.5bn (£4bn) deal guaranteeing 25,000 German car industry jobs with the sale of GM European plants to the Canadian car parts maker, Magna. But GM announced on Tuesday, wholly unexpectedly, that it had decided to keep and restructure its European operations, which involve 50,000 jobs including those at Opel in Germany and Vauxhall in Britain. GM has said it plans to axe some 10,000 jobs in Europe and many German Opel jobs could be affected.
"Our trust in General Motors is now zero, that's the heart of the problem," Klaus Franz, the head of Opel's workers' council, told some 10,000 applauding employees in Rüsselsheim, the car giant's headquarters, near Frankfurt yesterday. "We are back to square one."
There were other protests at Opel plants in the cities of Bochum, Eisenach and Kaiserslautern. GM has made no announcement about closure plans, but there were rumors that at least one German Opel plant would be shut down.