Berlin, Nov 25 (DPA) General Motors is to reduce its Opel workforce in Europe by about 9,000, the US car company’s new chief executive for Europe, Nick Reilly, said Wednesday in Germany on a tour to meet political and labour leaders.
The company aimed to cut manufacturing capacity by 20 percent, said Reilly three weeks after GM called off plans to sell its Opel division to a parts company, Magna.

Sources said Germany would bear the brunt, with a total of 5,300 jobs to be eliminated, but Belgium would also lose 2,000 jobs.

However a GM spokesman rejected those numbers as “wrong and utterly exaggerated”.

The forecast angered labour groups in Germany, who have campaigned over the past year to save the German factories and sacrifice those in Belgium and Britain to achieve savings at the volume carmaker.

In an arrangement with German officials, Magna had promised to make somewhat fewer cuts at German plants than GM may be proposing. Germany was furious when that arrangement was cancelled, but has now re-entered talks with GM as its anger has cooled.

Sources told DPA the Reilly plan totalled cuts of 8,700 jobs at various European sites.

Reilly himself, speaking after briefing the government of the German state of Hesse, said the plan was to cut 9,000 to 9,500 European jobs and reduce output capacity by 20 percent as GM tries to restore the Opel and Vauxhall car brands to profit.

The sources said that under GM’s plan, 2,400 jobs would go at Ruesselsheim near Frankfurt, where the main Opel factory is located, and 2,300 would be eliminated at a plant in the western city of Bochum. GM says that it will run both sites with fewer staff.

Two more German factories, at Eisenach and at Kaiserslautern, would each lose 300 jobs, the sources said.

It was not clear if an Opel plant in Antwerp, Belgium would survive. It currently employs 2,580 workers.

Reilly has put the cost of closures and restructuring at 3.3 billion euros, including the costs of labour buyouts. He has said he hopes European governments will offer aid to ease the pain.