What will happen to the development center of Opel in Rüsselsheim? The car manufacturer plans to outsource up to 2000 employees to the French engineering service provider Segula Technologies. The goal is a strategic partnership with the family business, which is already working for the new Opel mother PSA, said Opel.
"We will now discuss the proposal for this strategic partnership in detail with our social partners," said Opel CEO Michael Lohscheller. A concrete timetable did not name the company.
The development center currently employs about 7,000 people. The remaining 5,000 Rüsselsheim employees would continue to work for the PSA Group. Background of the desired reorganization is a significant decrease of orders of the former Opel-mother General Motors (GM) for the development center.
As soon as the plans became known a few months ago, the works council had expressed concern: the employee representatives feared that the sale of parts of the development center or a strategic partnership could circumvent IG Metall and thus the collective bargaining agreement. Opel now announced that Segula Technologies wants to maintain the agreed termination protection until July 2023 for the affected employees.
Segula currently has 11,000 employees, including 500 in Germany. The company is also active in the energy, rail and shipping sectors as a development and engineering service provider.