Berlin - Two threatened Opel automotive plants in Germany have been reprieved from the threat of closure, General Motors' (GM) European Chief Executive Nick Reilly said Tuesday. The 9,400 staff at the Bochum and Kaiserslautern plants in western Germany had feared closure under GM's forthcoming restructuring plan, details of which are expected to be presented to union epresentatives on Wednesday.
However meeting with state premiers today Reilly said the plants would remain open.
The newly appointed chief executive of GM Europe is on a tour of Opel's plants in Europe to shore up support for the resutructuring initiative - which he says will cost 4.9 billion dollars and some 9,000 jobs.
Opel employs some 50,000 people in Europe, half of them in Germany.
In a surprise move earlier this month, GM reversed its original decision to sell Opel, saying improved prospects for the car industry meant it could make Opel profitable again by itself.
GM was set on Tuesday pay the last installment, of 598 million dollars, of a 2.2-billion-dollar bridging loan that the German government had made available to buy time for Opel to be sold off.
Speaking in Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel greeted the news by saying that without the German government's money, Opel would have collapsed.
"The German taxpayer has not lost a cent on Opel," Merkel said, but added that she would have preferred to see the carmaker sold to an Austrian-Russian consortium led by Magna, as had been agreed until GM's dramatic U-turn.
The news that the Bochum factory will not now be closed will be a boost to Juergen Ruettgers, the state premier of Nordrhein-Westfalen where the plant is located.
Ruettgers, from Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), faces a tight state election contest in May 2010. Ruettgers had campaigned alongside Bochum workers for the plant to remain open.
Ruettgers however said that any aid from his state government to GM to help restructure the plant would depend on there being no compulsory redundancies.
The Kaiserslautern plant is also key to the economy of Rheinland-Pfalz, where Reilly met state-premier Kurt Beck later in the day. The factory, making components and powertrains for Opel vehicles employs 3,400 directly, and thousands more in feeder industries, is a major employer in the relatively poor region.
On Monday Reilly met in Brussels with officials of EU states where Opel has plants.
The officials agreed in Brussels not to enter into a "subsidy war", whereby countries with Opel plants would compete to offer restructuring cash to GM in a bid to stave off job losses on their own territory.
On Wednesday Reilly is due to meet with regional leaders of Hessen and Thuringen, where two Opel factories employ over 16,000 people.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is due to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday, when the two are expected to discuss the Opel restructuring plan. Opel employs some 7,200 people in Spain.
