Several months ago Motoring Weekly wrote an article about potential job losses at Opel and that was a follow up to an update to the purchase of Opel by the PSA Group who own Peugeot and Citroen.
Last month (September), PSA announced that they had found a way to get rid of jobs and therefore reduce costs in the Opel/Vauxhall division – they would hopefully transfer them to another company. In April PSA bosses demanded 3,700 jobs go by 2020 – that would help the management team reach a target that equals payday. There is a healthy bonus if the old GM Europe business is back in profit by then.
Opel management has been in talks with Segula Technologies, a French research and development company, to take up to 2,000 engineering jobs at the Russelheim factory in Germany. Segula have promised to protect the jobs until 2023 and would subcontract them back to Opel provided both companies can agree on terms. The press release associated with the story says “up to” 2,000 so that would presumably mean that if they don’t take all the team, some will lose their jobs – and that is why the unions are worried.
Segula already has 550 employees in Germany through two acquisitions and organic growth, working on automotive and aerospace research and development, and the company is positive about adding in more jobs to secure a future revenue stream. Management have said that if the deal is done, it would be a “triple win” for Segula, Opel and the employees. It is clear that Segula are expanding very quickly and announced that they wanted to employ 4,500 new employees early in 2017, so adding in a further 2,000 from Opel in early 2019 would not be too difficult it seems.
Let’s hope that PSA Group management are willing to agree terms such that these workers jobs are safe. The talks have been going on for a few months now and I hope that PSA aren’t trying to screw Segula down to an outsource pricing structure that is not worth the paper its written on.
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