General Motors (GM) production in Europe could be affected by further stoppages at a German plant this week in protest against plans to axe up to 12,000 jobs, works council officials said on Sunday.
Willi Groeber, an official at the IG Metall union, said he expected most workers at a GM Europe Opel plant in Bochum to lay down tools again on Monday - the third working day since stoppages started on Thursday night.
The world's largest car maker said on Thursday it intended to cut its 63,000-strong European workforce by nearly a fifth in the next two years in a bid to halt chronic losses in the region, with high-cost Germany to be hit hardest.
Klaus Franz, head of Opel's works council, said stoppages in Bochum meant that production at the second German plant in Ruesselsheim and at facilities in Belgium, Britain and Poland could be hit as well.
"If production stands still for three, four days in Bochum, Europe stands still," he said. "Stopping European production would mean double-digit million euros losses daily."
Works council and management are expected to start talks on Monday on a cost-savings deal, with unions demanding guarantees for jobs and plants in Germany, Europe's largest economy.
A GM spokesman reiterated the firm could not make any promises. Union sources say 4,000 jobs were earmarked to go at Bochum in the heavily industrialised Ruhr region alone.
Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported that GM could avoid immediate job cuts by transferring most of the German jobs to be slashed to hived-off companies, where workers would receive 70 percent of their wages for 2 years.
GM Europe Chairman Fritz Henderson told Handelsblatt newspaper the firm planned also to cut its management costs.
"We will reduce the expenditures for the management by 15 percent at least," he told the business paper in an article circulated on Sunday before its publication on Monday.