EUROPE Thousands protest GM plan to cut jobs

Most of the jobs to be eliminated are in Germany.
BOCHUM, Germany (AP) -- Thousands of employees at General Motors Corp.'s European factories staged protests today against the automaker's plan to slash 12,000 jobs across the continent, while a shortage of parts from a striking German plant forced two other factories to stop production.
Several thousand people gathered in a downtown square in the west German city of Bochum with union flags and banners proclaiming, "We are fighting bad management."
Bochum's workers fear their aging Adam Opel AG plant will be the worst hit and have stayed off the job since parent company GM announced its plans last Thursday. They say they won't return to work unless they get assurances that no one will be fired.
Walkout's effects
The walkout showed its first signs of squeezing GM's business elsewhere in Europe.
Opel spokesman Ulrich Weber said production at the company's main plant in Ruesselsheim was halted this morning for lack of parts usually supplied from Bochum.
Production at a plant in Antwerp, Belgium, was also expected to halt today, Opel Belgium spokesman Marco von Riel told Deutsche Welle television.
Thousands of workers also gathered for a march in Ruesselsheim, and work was to stop for two hours at Saab's manufacturing plant in Trollhaettan, Sweden.
"The roof is burning at Opel, and General Motors is trying to put out the fire with gasoline," union official Udo Loewenbrueck told demonstrators in Ruesselsheim.
Unions called for today's "day of action" after GM announced that it expects to get rid of 12,000 jobs in Europe by the end of 2006 -- most in Germany -- to cut $620 million in costs annually at its money-losing Opel, Vauxhall and Saab operations.
Overhead costs
GM says it must reduce overhead costs to cope with sluggish consumer demand and increased competition from Japanese and other European carmakers.
The company has struggled to fix problems in Europe for years, and Opel's current management concedes that its predecessors let quality problems get out of hand in the late 1990s.
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