The Opel plant in Vienna-Aspern, founded in the early 1980s, will close permanently on Friday. The automotive group Stellantis announced in the summer of 2023 that it would close the former General Motors plant and stop producing six-speed manual transmissions. A social plan was implemented for the 300 affected employees and a job center was set up. After the end of series production, around 50 employees will remain at the plant until autumn for dismantling work.
“In the job center, we have job offers from around 150 companies and we have already been able to find new jobs for around half of our employees,” said Stellantis Austria spokesman Christoph Stummvoll on Wednesday, according to an ORF report. The in-house job center will continue to operate even following series production ends, until all work at the factory site has been completed.
“This means that employees still have the opportunity to view job offers and apply to companies. Stellantis continues to provide all possible support to help them find a new job. At the same time, there is the opportunity to join the WAFF to receive further training,” Stummvoll said in response to an APA query.
Site is being dismantled
In the coming months, the machines and everything that is present at the site will be dismantled. “Some will be sold, some will be transported to other plants,” said Stummvoll. In June of last year, Stellantis announced that it no longer saw a future in the plant, especially since demand for six-speed manual transmissions for combustion engines is falling in times of electromobility. “Demand is moving towards automatic transmissions, demand is moving towards electromobility. This also applies to the very important commercial vehicles. This means that fewer manual transmissions, such as those manufactured here at the site, are needed,” said Stummvoll.
Works council member Christoph Rohm summed up the mood to “Wien heute” as follows: “Wistful, partly annoyed with the company. Because the work we did here was not rewarded as much as we would have liked. Of course, we would have liked the company to continue to exist.”
Unclear future for property
At peak times, more than 2,000 people worked at the plant. In August 2017, Opel became part of the French PSA Group. In January 2021, Peugeot’s parent company PSA and Fiat-Chrysler merged to form Stellantis. In recent years, the plant has shrunk more and more. Engines were still manufactured at the site until 2020. At that time, Aspern lost the last major order from General Motors and the number of employees continued to decline. The corona period and problems due to a chip shortage also took their toll on the site.
It is still unclear what will happen to the 600,000 square meter plot of land that will become available. In March, it was said that Stellantis had begun initial talks with relevant stakeholders in Austria. At the time, there was talk that a business park might be built. The property owner is the Federal Real Estate Company (BIG).