By Jeff Black Nov 5, 2009, 15:28 GMT
Berlin - From the point of view of the German autoworker, the devil you know isn't necessarily better than the devil you don't.
On Thursday, more than 10,000 Opel employees turned out to express their displeasure at the decision of General Motors, Opel's US parent, to keep their company, instead of selling it to the Magna- Sberbank consortium.
That deal had been the subject of months of torturous wrangling, with the jobs of tens of thousands of workers at stake. Now, it is in the bin.
To get an idea of the emotions that the fate of Opel arouses amongst its staff, witness the now-ubiquitous T-shirts worn by workers when on demonstration duty: 'We Are Opel', the slogan goes - a clear if somewhat overblown reference to the popular refrain during the last days of the East German dictatorship, We Are The People.
Now, Opel workers are back in the arms of GM, which has arisen like Lazarus from bankruptcy, and is suddenly feeling optimistic about the prospects for the automotive industry post financial crisis.
On the whole, they are not happy in Detroit's familiar embrace.
Hours before GM announced its decision, unions representing the 50,000 Opel employees across Europe (25,000 of them are in Germany) had cut a deal with Magna to forgo bonuses and other benefits in order to cut costs across the firm.
'We had been ready to pay for our future,' said Opel works' council head Klaus Franz.
'Now the future with GM could cost us our own future,' he told workers at the Ruesselsheim plant, a massive factory in the western German state of Hesse, where the Insignia, a family saloon, is made.
GM's vice president John Smith said Wednesday that some 10,000 job cuts would be needed under the company's own restructuring plan - no fewer than had been envisaged under the one designed by Magna.
But the difference is now that workers fear that GM will now pay no special attention to maintaining German jobs, but will cut wherever the hand of efficiency points them.
In the run-up to the German general election in September, the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel nearly exhausted its political capital cutting a deal that would do precisely the opposite, incurring the displeasure of EU competition watchdogs and neighbouring states alike.
GM has threatened to close Opel altogether if European unions do not agree to staff cuts and closures. Opel has major plants in Germany, Spain, Britain, Belgium, Austria and Poland.
The demonstrations on Thursday, at all four of Opel's plants in Germany, were partly fear of the unknown, and outrage at what German workers see as a particularly hostile way of doing business.
German industry is characterised by a consensus approach to everything from deal-making to wage negotiations. It is part and parcel of the country's treasured social-market economy, which Hessen premier Roland Koch invoked when speaking to the crowd in Ruesselsheim.
'We have not lost our pride, we have not lost our creativity. You have invested your hearts' blood into these factories,' he said.
But German industry chiefs, as well as the government, have been seemingly outfoxed by the brash 'Amis' and their rather less mannered business style.
The sense of embarrassment is palpable. The headline on Thursday's Bild newspaper, Germany's largest selling, loosely translates as 'Yanks take Merkel for a ride'.
'The Americans should not think that they can somehow blackmail Germany,' Volker Kauder, a parliamentarian from Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats told the ZDF broadcaster.
Opel representatives and local politicians are in no mood to let GM do with the firm what it will. Franz demanded that Opel become a genuinely integrated European company, not one that is merely a brand controlled from Detroit.
As representatives from the German states with Opel factories met in Berlin on Thursday, Merkel had already called US President Barack Obama to press for a new GM strategy to be completed.
One unintended consequence of GM's announcement however may cool the rage of the German government against GM's surprise U-turn: Tax.
As British Business Secretary Peter Mandelson pointed out in Brussels, with no Magna deal there will be no costly state loans to bear by German, British and Spanish taxpayers. From the point of view of governments, the familiar devil would at least be cheaper.
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