The Vauxhall rescue talks.
The unavoidable, and by far the biggest motoring related piece of news flying around at the moment is the current rescue talks happening in Germany for the General Motors own Vauxhall group.
Over the last few weeks the German government have been in talks with the US car giant GM to try and save thousands of jobs in a several Vauxhall factories around the country. This in turn has sparked huge up roar in the UK, where Vauxhall workers in the two UK plants are accusing the UK government of not doing enough to try and secure there jobs with Vauxhall.
This has been heated further with the rumours that the two bidders in the race to buy Vauxhall have said that they will be looking to cut thousands of jobs across Europe in an effort to beat the downturn in sales due to the recession.
The story has received a large amount of press over the last week or so, this the business secretary appearing on several news programmes trying to defend the UK governments current activity during the negotiation process (or lack of it).
The breaking news this morning though has put a halt on everything as the talks between the German government and GM have broken down after new requests from GM for ‘extra aid’ from the German government to help the suffering company. The German Finance Minister, said this morning: “We were unpleasantly surprised when this new demand came out of the blue. We found that pretty scandalous.”
We will have to wait and see as to what this does for the jobs of both the workers in Germany and the UK in the coming months.
