{"id":63882,"date":"2018-04-23T11:55:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-23T11:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=63882"},"modified":"2018-04-23T11:55:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-23T11:55:00","slug":"german-region-ready-to-help-opel-but-wont-be-blackmailed-premier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/business\/german-region-ready-to-help-opel-but-wont-be-blackmailed-premier.html","title":{"rendered":"German region ready to help Opel, but won&#8217;t be blackmailed: premier"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 18pt;color: #000000\">German region ready to help Opel, but won&#8217;t be blackmailed: premier<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">The German state of Thuringia is ready to offer assistance to carmaker Opel in order to keep the region\u2019s Eisenach plant open, state premier Bodo Ramelow told Reuters on Monday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">The state could help with energy costs and property, he said, but added that it would only lend assistance if wage bargaining parties returned to the negotiating table.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">It is unacceptable to use investment decisions to put the state of Thuringia \u201cvirtually under threat of blackmail\u201d, Ramelow said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Of the three states in which Opel produces in Germany, he added: \u201cThe three states won\u2019t allow themselves to be divided.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">France\u2019s PSA Group last year paid General Motors $2.6 billion for loss-making Opel and British sister brand Vauxhall and is now seeking to make savings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Opel needs to cut personnel costs by up to 25 percent to make German sites competitive, Chief Executive Michael Lohscheller told German weekly Bilanz.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Any investment in the German sites is conditional upon them becoming competitive. Opel has no plans to shut down a German factory and will honor existing collective wage bargaining agreements, Lohscheller told the magazine.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">In a separate interview with Automobilwoche, Lohscheller said it would not be able to start production of a new model in Germany in the first half of 2018 because there was no settlement with labor representatives about how to make German sites more competitive.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">The German carmaker group\u2019s German works council on Monday insisted that Opel management was not honoring their side of the bargain.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">\u201cLohscheller should tell the truth. The tariff agreements are not being adhered to in the product and project plans for factories and engineering,\u201d the companies works council said in a statement on Monday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 8pt;color: #000000\">Source:-https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-peugeot-opel-thuringia\/german-region-ready-to-help-opel-but-wont-be-blackmailed-premier-idUSKBN1HU11I<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/business\/german-region-ready-to-help-opel-but-wont-be-blackmailed-premier.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>German region ready to help Opel, but won&#8217;t be blackmailed: premier The German state of Thuringia is ready to offer assistance to carmaker Opel in order to keep the region\u2019s Eisenach plant open, state premier Bodo Ramelow told Reuters on Monday. The state could help with energy costs and property, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":63883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[146,117626,133350,128711,30775,128710],"class_list":["post-63882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-business-news","tag-business-news-today","tag-german-region-ready-to-help-opel-but-wont-be-blackmailed-premier","tag-latest-and-daily-business-news","tag-latest-business-news-usa","tag-live-updates-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}