BOCHUM, Germany — Udo Moede steered his Opel compact car slowly over the cracked pavement of the half-empty parking lot at the company’s plant in Bochum, Germany, on a recent workday.
“This used to be full,” said Moede, 59, who worked 40 years at the plant before taking early retirement several years ago. “You had to get here early to get a spot.” The only people visible on this day were a couple of truck drivers standing idly next to rigs with Czech license plates.
The two-story brick factory is a visible manifestation of the problems facing automakers in Europe — and the communities that depend on them for jobs.
Built atop a former coal mine, the Bochum plant has already suffered waves of layoffs. From more than 20,000 in its heyday, a little more than 3,000 people work there now — 5,000, counting subcontractors.
Now, after losing $747 million on its European operations last year — its 12th straight year of losses — General Motors, Opel’s owner, is under intense pressure to make further cuts.
Worker representatives at Opel say they have been told the company must reduce production capacity by 30 percent. Bochum, as one of the oldest Opel plants, with some of the most highly paid workers, is considered the most endangered.
Opel is an acute example of a problem that also afflicts competitors like Fiat, Renault and PSA Peugeot Citroen. All makers of midprice cars have more factories than they need, while the West European auto market is entering what appears to be a severe slump. New registrations of passenger cars fell nearly 10 percent in February compared with a year earlier, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.
The burden of reducing that costly production surplus is likely to fall disproportionately on communities like Bochum, which depend on the automobile industry for jobs.
The city of 367,000 people in Germany’s industrial Ruhr Valley has already suffered its share of setbacks. All that is left of the mining industry is a museum. The Nokia cellphone factory shut down in 2008. The unemployment rate is 10 percent, compared with a national average of 7.2 percent.
Despite waves of job cuts, Opel remains the biggest private employer in Bochum. The regional chamber of commerce estimates that 40,000 jobs depend on Opel Bochum, at businesses ranging from parts suppliers to restaurants.
GM has promised to honor an agreement with workers not to close any Opel plants until after 2014. That was part of an earlier cost-cutting program that included closure of a plant in Antwerp, Belgium. But Bochum workers worry that Opel would stop investing in operations there in preparation for a shutdown once the agreement expires.
While saying it has not decided to close any plants, GM has made it clear that major cost cuts will be necessary in Europe.
“All participants are in agreement that Opel must operate profitably and that measures must be taken to increase sales, raise margins and reduce costs,” GM and worker representatives said in a joint statement March 28.
Workers have vowed to do everything they can to prevent GM from leaving. Several thousand gathered at an indoor arena in Bochum for an informational meeting organized by the Opel workers council March 31 in response to the speculation. Employee representatives handed out T-shirts in bright yellow, the Opel color, that said, “We’re staying in Bochum.”
“Bochum won’t budge, we made that clear,” Carsten Adametz, a toolmaker at Opel, said outside the event.
Workers have some leverage. German labor laws give them a voice in cost-cutting plans. In addition, Bochum is the only factory producing a new generation of the Opel Zafira minivan. A strike could deprive Opel dealers of a popular model.
But workers worry what will happen when the model ages and demand inevitably falls. An Opel spokesman, Alexander Bazio, said no decisions had been made about assembly of future models in Bochum.
“Without a second model and more investment, it looks grim,” said Lothar Marquardt, who worked at Opel as an electrician before becoming a worker representative who sat on the company’s supervisory board. He is now retired.
Bochum also produces a version of the Opel Astra, a compact sedan. But it is an older generation of the car that is sold only in Eastern Europe.
Worker representatives insist that shutting down Bochum would cost more than it would save, because of the need to clean up the site, with its legacy as a former coal mine, to make severance payments to employees and to move production to another factory. In addition, the shutdown would further damage Opel’s image in Germany, workers say.
“If Bochum closes, it will be one of the most expensive shutdowns in history,” said Rainer Einenkel, chairman of the Bochum workers council.
Opel’s plant in Ellesmere Port, Britain, is also seen as endangered because of its age and wage costs. Britain and Germany are the company’s biggest markets, with sales of about 268,000 vehicles each last year. Opels in Britain are sold under the Vauxhall brand name.
GM has to make cuts somewhere. It has not reported a profit on its European operations, which consist mostly of Opel, since 1999. It has lost well over $10 billion in Europe since then.
Among Bochum residents, hostility toward GM is combined with fear about what would happen if the company left.
“Trust in American company managers is not very big,” said Joerg Linden, spokesman for the regional chamber of commerce. At the same time, he said, “Bochum needs Opel and Opel needs Bochum.”
Many workers, who call themselves Opelaners, blame GM for what they say were years of mismanagement. They say GM prevented Opel from developing export markets and, more recently, has promoted Chevrolet brand cars in Europe at the expense of Opel. The Chevrolets are made in South Korea or other countries outside Europe.
Karl-Friedrich Stracke, the chief executive of Opel, denied last month that GM had prevented the unit from selling outside Europe. Still, except for Russia and Turkey, Opel’s sales outside the European Union are negligible.
Opel’s history of losses and labor turmoil, which includes noisy disputes with workers and a planned sale of the unit in 2009 that GM backed out of at the last minute, has unsettled workers and ensured a steady flow of negative headlines. It may also have contributed to a slide in market share to 6.4 percent in February from 7.1 percent a year earlier.
“We need calm,” said Einenkel, head of the workers council at the Bochum factory.
Some Bochum residents are pessimistic about the plant’s chances after 2014, when the agreement with GM expires. Employees in Bochum say they earn less than the union rate, but that is still six times that of their counterparts in Gliwice, Poland, site of a newer factory.
Another problem may be the Bochum factory’s age. The building has two stories, in contrast to most modern factories, which are typically arrayed on one level to allow more efficient movement of materials.
Bazio, the Opel spokesman, said the company had arranged the production process so the two stories are not a disadvantage.
But the city’s hopes to hold on to Opel remain bleak for many there.
“The closing of the factory has been looming for years,” said Ruediger Woellmann, a 46-year-old Bochum resident who left the factory in 2006 after 18 years there.
“Everyone who isn’t stupid already left Opel,” said Woellmann, who still lives in an apartment building originally built for Opel workers. Many restaurants and shops in the neighborhood have closed, he said. “The town is now a shadow of what it once was.”
Information for this article was contributed by Ben Kilb of The New York Times.
Business, Pages 63 on 04/15/2012