Unheard-of news are emanating from Rüsselsheim. So unheard-of that Automobilwoche found it necessary to send out an Extra! Extra! Lesen Sie all about it e-mail to its subscribers: GM’s Opel, the very same company that wants to shed 8,000 of its 48,000 jobs in Europe, is short of people. They are hiring! One reason: Jobs are being exported from the U.S.A. to Europe.
WTF? First of, Opel is desperately seeking 250 new engineers for their Research & Development Center in Rüsselsheim. By 2014, Opel-Chef Nick Reilly wants to see 80 percent of Opel’s product portfolio renewed. Then, there is a lot of new work for alternative drivetrains. In Reilly’s budget are €11b to pay for this effort of Manhattan Project proportions. Where will the money come from? Don’t ask.
Also, end of the Abwrackprämie be damned, people are buying more Opels than planned. They are especially keen on the new Insignia and Astra. Extra shifts are being planned for Rüsselsheim and Gliwice (or Gleiwitz, as some Germans still insist to call it) in Poland.
The pressure is so high on the R&D Center that R&D bosswoman Rita Forst even considers to bring in outside technical help. The R&D Center in Rüsselsheim gives jobs to 6,500 people, amongst them 4,800 engineers. Soon, it will be more than 5,000, hard at work to develop GM’s cars of the future.
Works Council head Klaus Franz (who needs to be consulted when new people are hired) approves: “Germany receives more responsibility for development. Projects are being moved from the U.S. to Germany.” Development of the new Zafira, and of the new generation of the Corsa, will be Made in Germany.
Reilly is still hoping for €1.8b of government money, most of it from Germany. No news on that. As reported previously, the German government has indicated to abandon all hopes for a decision before the elections in North Rhine-Westphalia in early May. After those elections, there will be little reason to buy any votes.
Does this mean that Germany is a cheaper place to engineer autos? Or the R&D center just has reached a critical mass and is a better place to do auto engineering?
I have theorized for some time that GM did not do much auto engineering in Detroit…just some Cadillacs and the pickups. All I ever hear is that this model is based on some Opel platform or Daewoo platform or Australian platform. No Detroit platforms.
What does a major stockholder of GM think about this?
Good news for Opel.
Don’t get the picture, does TTAC think Opel Engineers are losers?
I don’t think Bertel is implying that Opel engineers are losers. But you have to ask, what sort of calibre of engineers are going to be happy to relocate to Russelsheim in order to get a job with a company that runs out of money at the end of H1 2010 and has no actual cash stream to be able to pay for the jobs being listed? Pretty desperate ones I’d imagine.
If Opel were run by Magna and Russian thugs, I am sure the spin from the author would be different.
Engineers who need to feed their family would gladly take a job there.
Totally. As long as the Russian thugs send me my monthly check and keep me alive, I will be all praise for our beloved Russian thugs. There is no better mafia than the Russian mafia! BTW, the monthly postcard I get from my kid they keep hostage is always a highlight. Spasiba, Russian Mafia!
They are not the only ones hiring.
Welcome to Chrysler LLC Hourly Jobs.
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Welcome to a temp job at Belvidere as the only one listed? Doesn’t have quite the glamour of a bunch of Engineers
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…(or Gleiwitz, as some Germans still insist to call it) in Poland…
Of course, it’s “Gleiwitz”, of course, it’s “Prag” and not “Praha”, of course, it’s “Danzig” and not “Gdansk” in German. Remember Königgrätz? WTF?
It’s not “insisting” out of some weird natonalistic mood (“Heim ins Reich”), these are simply the German names for cities that played a part in German/Austrian history. Nobody sane in the US or UK would talk about “München” instead of “Munich”.
I remember it well. It’s Königsgrätz, btw.
No Bertel, it’s Königgrätz.
Wo er Recht hat, hat er Recht …
Geez Herb, don’t mention ‘German’, ‘nationalist mood’, and ‘Poland’ in the same sentance.
On a different note, why do fast food joints always get pranked like this? The Wendy’s near me had a sign that read ‘Positions available for full time losers.’
Anyway, maybe the German government should pay for Chrysler employees left in the lurch by Daimler to relocate. It’s only fair.
And seriously who the f*** couldn’t figure out that Ricky Martin was gay?
Easy to prank a job called “Closer” by removing the “C” – though what average prankster is going to have a 10-foot pole to knock the letter down? Methinks that it’s an “inside job”.
As to Opel – I don’t know too much (duh), except that they seem to engineer platforms that make it to a lot of GM products worldwide.
…..or remove one of the G’s in the Burger King Angus Burger signs…..
I saw a ‘Now Hiring Closers’ sign on a BK last night, and thought, “Great – now Mariano Rivera has a place to go if the Yankees can him.”
In other news, there was a longhorns-n-cowboy-hats-type bar/grill I knew in Long Island called something like, “Jack’s Steak House”, with a big sign, each word written over the other. Unfortunately, the S and the K went out on their sign, and for weeks, nighttime passers-by looking for a good hunk of honest red meat probably never thought about stopping at JACK’S TEA HOUSE. Since the words were center justified, you flat out couldn’t tell it ever said anything else in the dark…
I am totally offended by this sign. My first job was at McD’s…..helped pay my way through an engineering degree which landed me in a mediocre, mid-level position with a formerly bankrupt auto supplier with no immediate opportunities for advancement, no bonuses, no pay raises…..Huh, what’s that?….OK…..Nevermind!
Seriously though…..McD’s is an excellent opportunity for kids to acquire good work ethics, earn scholarships, and learn leadership skills that will benefit in whatever career they choose. Depending on a kids personality, they can make it a loser job or a positive launching pad to their future. Unfortunately, the entitlement attitude of many of today’s kids (including my ex-wife’s) places starter jobs as below their station in life.
Tea party-like Black and White / Good and Evil judgemental thinking seem to be the theme of many of the Opel commentaries. Ms. Merkel did not get the opportunity to pander to the unionized workers like the PTFOA did in the NA, and now Opel sucks in evrey way, including engineers who are actually quite talented.
And I am no GM fan.
hmmmm…the Zafira and Corsa were never engineered in the US, always in Germany in the first place. So what is this guy talking about? Maybe GM was planning on Daewoo doing the engineering, but certainly not the hollowed out US engineering, which only does the following:
1) Full size truck/SUV platform
2) Corvette platform
3) manages the cobbled together international platforms (CTS). So file these under “partially engineered” in the US.
Everything else is either no longer in existence (Trailblazer) or done in Germany, Korea, or Australia, or is based on a 20 year old platform (Impala) that may have originally been engineered in the US but won’t be anymore (next Impala will be on stretched Epsilon, i.e. German-engineered, maybe modified by American engineers).
My understanding is that the US-based engineers on the rest of the US vehicles like the Malibu “engineer” things that are only modifications to the pre-existing foreign sourced platforms. There are probably still a good amount of powertrain engineers here at GM in the US, but I would bet the ground-up powertrain engineering done here is mostly only on US-market powertrains, which again, won’t be powering Opels.
Precisely, apart from pickups, Detroit contributes nothing to the table. They’re only around to move money around, which is why they find themselves in this position in the first place. Opel actually does something to keep the company alive.