RUESSELSHEIM, Germany, Oct 14 (AFP) - US auto giant General Motors got tough with its loss-making European activities on Thursday, saying that one in five jobs in the region faced the chop in a brutal bid to drive the businesses back to profit after six years of losses.
GM, the world's biggest car maker, said it would axe 12,000 jobs from a total European workforce of around 60,000 over the next two years, with German unit Opel to bear the brunt of the cuts.
And GM Europe chief Fritz Henderson said that while there were no immediate plans to shut down any plants, as unions and politicians had initially feared, factory closures could not be ruled out altogether.
The job cuts -- around 90 percent of which would be made next year -- were part of GM's plans to cut costs at its European activities, which have been entrenched in loss since 1999, by 500 million euros (610 million dollars) by 2006.
In addition to Opel in Germany, GM also owns Vauxhall in Britain and Saab in Sweden.
In Stockholm, Saab said that around 500 jobs were on the line at its 6,300-strong Trollhaetan plant in western Sweden.
No comment was forthcoming from Vauxhall. But the British car maker, which employs around 5,000 at Ellesmere Port, was widely expected to be spared the worst of the cuts.
GM Europe argued the drastic measures were necessary in face of the difficult situation in the European car sector and no indication that things were likely to improve any time soon.
The car maker did not specify exactly how many jobs would be cut at Opel or elsewhere, or where precisely the cuts would be made.
That would be decided in negotiations with unions and labour representatives that were scheduled to start straight away.
But media reports said 4,000 jobs were on the line at Opel's main manufacturing site in Ruesselsheim, near Frankfurt, and another 4,000 at the factory in Bochum in the heavily industrialised Ruhr region.
Opel's two other German factories in Kaiserslautern and Eisenach would not be affected.
GM Europe chief Henderson said he was convinced for the time being that the cost cuts could be made "without closing plants."
Instead, the job cuts would be effected via short-term measures that would primarily affect production and engineering.
But he cautioned, rather ominiously, that "we can't rule out anything."
Over the past few days, speculation has reached fever pitch that GM Europe might close a production site, with either the Ruesselsheim or the Bochum factories seen as likely candidates.
GM has recently said it wants to build its mid-range Saab and Opel models at one and the same plant and that could mean that either the Ruesselsheim factory or the Saab plant in Trollhaettan could eventually be shut down by 2009 or 2010.
Job-cutting plans of such magnitude have inevitably become a political issue in Germany, where many major companies, particularly in the key automobile sector, are busy downsizing their workforces at a time when unemployment remains stuck above four million.
Such was the crisis at Opel that Economy Minister Wolfgang Clement travelled to Bochum on Thursday to meet with the regional state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia Peer Steinbrueck and his economy minister Harald Schartau as well as employee representatives and unions.
Clement even cancelled a meeting with French Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy at the last minute to go to Bochum.
Roland Koch, the regional premier for the state of Hesse, home to Ruesselsheim, said he was "deeply concerned" about the job cutting plans and urged GM to issue a guarantee that the Ruesselsheim factory would not closed.
"It's now about preventing the worst and limiting the damage," Koch said.
The car maker said it expected unions to agree to the belt-tightening plans.
But the unions signalled they would not take the measures lying down.
"We know that General Motors had been making losses in Europe and that there is an urgent need for action," the works council said.
Instead of pursuing a course of confrontation, "management should sit down with employee representatives and negotiate acceptable solutions," it said.
Unions demanded that management issue guarantees not to close any plants and make any forced redundancies.
Furthermore, employees at Opel, Saab and Vauxhall would not allow themselves to be played off against each other, unions said, promising "a day of protest" next week to accompany the start of negotiations with management.