16 February, 2012IMF U.S. affiliate United Auto Workers (UAW) announced that General Motors Corp. (GM) workers will receive approximately US$ 7,000 in profit-sharing based on results of 2011 earnings. European Metalworkers Federation (EMF) insists GM should develop a long term sustainable business plan for the GM owned Opel/Vauxhall in Europe.
GLOBAL: In a statement issued on February 16, 2012 the United Auto Workers (UAW) announced good news for the GM workers in United States. They will receive US$7,000 in profit-sharing based on the results of 2011 earnings. The UAW welcomed the policy of the company, which invested more than US$3.6 billion in the U.S. and created or retained more than 9,500 jobs.
"UAW members at GM went into negotiations this fall with a strategy to make the company successful and to share in its success. And that strategy paid off," commented UAW Vice President Joe Ashton. Follow the link to read the full UAW statement on GM 2011 profit sharing.
The situation is not as positive in Europe where the GM owned European Opel/Vauxhall reported a loss of US$ 0.7 billion in 2011. However, given that US$ 0.3 billion of this is the cost of restructuring the GM business in Europe, it showed a 1.6 billion better results in 2011 than in 2010, when the company registered US$ two billon losses.
In a joint statement the EMF, the European Employee Forum and the Opel/Vauxhall European trade unions said, "In order to put Opel/Vauxhall on a sustainable business foundation, worker representatives and management need to work on common solutions on the basis of the existing agreements -- also in economically challenging times. The agreements provide for product and competence commitments and exclude plant closures and forced redundancies until the end of 2014."
They furthermore added, "Based on the existing agreements we demand that Opel/Vauxhall develops and promotes a long-term sustainable business plan to take advantage of the predicted overall market growth." The full text of the statement is available on EMF website at the link: http://www.emf-fem.org/Press/Press-releases/Joint-statement-of-the-European-Metalworkers-Federation-the-European-Employee-Forum-and-the-European-trade-unions-on-the-Opel-Vauxhall-business-result-2011.
In South America GM reported a loss in 2011 of US$122 million against US$818 million earned in 2010.