RUESSELSHEIM, Germany, Aug 27 (AFP) - Troubled German car maker Opel on Friday joined a growing number of other companies in the eurozone's biggest economy that want to extend their work week to 40 hours without a corresponding pay rise in a bid to cut costs.
Opel, a unit of US group General Motors, said it planned to extend the work week of its 32,000 employees in Germany from 35 hours to 40 hours at a time when the country's cherished social welfare system and generous working conditions are under attack in the name of cost-cutting.
By announcing the re-introduction of the 40-hour week, the car maker was confirming a report published in the Friday edition of the mass-circulation daily Bild.
Earlier this week, unions at Opel revealed they had received a catalogue of cost-cutting demands from management that included "cuts in income and welfare contributions, as well as changes in working hours."
Both management and unions had so far refused to reveal further detail while negotiations were in progress.
Bild said the measures included not only a return to a 40-hour week, but a pay freeze and a reduction in bonuses, particularly for night and late shifts.
The information "corresponds to reality," a company spokeswoman said.
Opel is following the lead taken by rival car makers such as DaimlerChrysler and Volkswagen in demanding such sacrifices from its workforce.
However, unlike Opel, DaimlerChrysler and VW have not talked so far about a general return to the 40-hour week. The 35-hour week was introduced in the automobile sector in the 1990s.
Electronics giant Siemens was the first company to break the dam in June when it managed to re-introduce the 40-hour week at two key factories, without any corresponding rise in pay, in return for a promise not to move jobs to Hungary, where labour costs are much lower.
A number of other major companies, such as travel and tourism giant Thomas Cook, car parts makers Continental and Bosch and truck maker MAN, as well as department store operator Karstadt, quickly followed suit.
Similar moves are also under way in the public sector.
Earlier this week, Volkswagen announced that in upcoming pay talks due to start next month it would seek a two-year wage freeze and increased flexibility of working hours for its 100,000-plus employees in Germany in a move to slash labour costs by 30 percent by 2011.
And on Friday, VW revealed that its top executives were also willing to make such sacrifces and managers, who had already accepted a 25-percent cut in the performance-related component of their salaries this year, were also ready to accept a two-year wage freeze.
"A wage freeze would concern everybody," VW said in a statement.