More than 60,000 employees of German-US car giant DaimlerChrysler downed tools around the country on Thursday in a concerted day of action to protest against management's cost-cutting plans, unions said.
At DaimlerChrysler's main site in Sindelfingen, near Stuttgart, around 20,000 employees stopped work for about two hours and similar stoppages were set to be staged at other factories around in the country, notably in Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg, IG Metall and the employees' council said.
The carmaker employs around 160,000 people in Germany.
DaimlerChrysler's Mercedes unit is threatening to shift production of its new Mercedes C-Class cars away from Sindelfingen to a South Africa factory if unions do not agree to 500 million euros (615 million dollars) in cost cuts.
That could lead to the loss of 6,000 jobs at the Sindelfingen plant. IG Metall slammed that threat as "blackmail".
Even Wolfgang Thierse, the president of German parliament, hit out at DaimlerChrysler management for "creating a climate of fear. It's repulsive to exert pressure on employees by making ultimatums," he told the daily Tagesspiegel on Thursday.
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