Source:
BBCOpel workers in Germany are attending a mass rally outside US parent company General Motors' (GM) headquarters. Thousands of the 25,000 workers from
Opel's four factories are gathered in Ruesselsheim to protest at GM's refusal to sell its European operations.
The IG Metall union now fears GM will close plants in Germany and cut more jobs than Magna would have. "Our trust
is now zero, and that is the heart of the problem," Klaus Franz, the head of Opel's employee council, told thousands of workers, to applause.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin criticised GM's decision to pull the plug on the Magna-Sberbank deal, but said his government would still support the US carmaker's projects in Russia. "The last-minute refusal to close this deal certainly does not harm our interests, but reveals our American partners' somewhat peculiar culture of communication with their counterparts," he drily observed.
However, workers in the UK and Poland have welcomed GM's decision. "The future is still uncertain, but our fear is smaller," said Miroslaw Rzezniczek, a Solidarity union official at the Gliwice plant in Poland.
Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8343934.stm
Has GM announced what caused it to cancel the sale of Opel? Are they going to continue to operate it or sell it to someone else?
I hadn't realized that GM had factories all over Europe and in Russia.