6 April, 2009
In meetings in Hanover, Germany, on 2-3 April, workers’ representatives of Continental AG met and adopted a common declaration opposing nearly 2,000 job cuts in Hanover and Clairoix, France. Calling the cuts “morally despicable,” the statement says that both factories posted outstanding financial results in 2008.
Using the premise of the economic crisis to shutter the two plants, the statement calls the decision by Continental to close the two plants as lacking an economic basis. It also calls Continental’s decision “an enormous breach of trust” against dedicated workers and calls on the German tyre and auto-parts supplier to rescind the decision.
The joint declaration also pledged to bring the issues front and centre at Continental’s annual general meeting on 23 April in Hanover.
In March, Hanover-based Continental said it would close an auto tyre plant in Clairoix, making redundant 1,120 French workers, as well as close the commercial tyre plant of Hanover-Stöcken, costing another 780 workers. The announcement raised an outcry from top-level officials in both German and French governments, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde and Raymond Soubie, Social Affairs adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Workers at both factories have conducted several vehement protests at the two factories in recent weeks, as well as French rubber workers taking to the streets in Paris. Continental’s decision in March also calls for reductions at a plant in Puchov, Slovakia.
The statement issued by workers’ representatives late last week was made by all French unions, German unions IGBCE and IG Metall, Works Council Chairman Jörge Schustereit, and by IGBCE’s Werner Bischoff, a member of the Continental supervisory board.