At Opel, people are tightening their belts because of the corona crisis. Some of the savings come from a contraction in the workforce, but that is not going as fast as Opel hoped.
A total of no fewer than 2,100 jobs must be lost at Opel in Germany. A significant loss for the brand, which unfortunately is forced to reduce costs due to the consequences of the corona crisis. Obviously, they want to avoid forced redundancies as much as possible, which is why Rüsselsheim has tried to respond to voluntary departure with severance payments and early retirement schemes. However, that turns out not to be enough.
The brand showed Automobilwoche know that only some 500 people have used these schemes to date, so there are still 1,600 jobs on the elimination list. Opel is now looking at options to make these disappear on a voluntary basis as much as possible, but it is warned that forced layoffs are lurking. It is reported that the focus is mainly on scrapping secondary and tertiary positions at the head office in Rüsselsheim.
Rüsselsheim must be smaller
It was also announced a month ago that Opel also wants to sell parts of the head office and the grounds around it. “That was even bigger than Monaco three years ago,” the brand told the same medium at the time. Now that Opel falls under PSA, some of its previously independent activities will probably also be easier to transfer to the French parent company.