Opel workers to discuss restructuring plan on Weds

A truck with Opel cars drives past the Opel plant in Bochum November 5, 2009.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Union representatives hope the future of Opel's 50,000 workers in Europe will become clearer when they meet on Wednesday with General Motors' GM.UL interim regional chief Nick Reilly to discuss restructuring plans.

"It's of crucial importance to us that there is a complete financing until 2014. We do not want at all to find ourselves in the situation that they cancel once again (investments in) models and new development work," Lothar Sorger, Opel's deputy labor leader at its Kaiserslautern site in Germany, said on Monday.

Labor leaders at Opel had agreed with jilted suitor Magna (MGa.TO) to contribute 265 million euros in annual savings despite the Canadian auto parts supplier's plans to cut around 10,500 jobs.

So far they have not ruled out offering the same deal to GM after GM decided earlier this month not to sell its European carmaking business to Magna.

But Opel's European works council boss, Klaus Franz, has linked any concessions to greater independence for management in Ruesselsheim, Germany, and investment plans that would preserve all the manufacturing plants and as many jobs as possible.

Any move by GM to concentrate 10,000 planned job cuts in countries that refuse to offer significant state aid could drive a wedge between unions and governments and alarm regulators in Brussels.

Officials like EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen and the premier of the German state of Hesse state, Roland Koch, have warned governments against trying to outbid each other in an "auction" to secure their local Opel jobs.

Verheugen is due to meet Reilly in Brussels on Monday afternoon together with other European government officials to discuss how best to coordinate policy.

(Reporting by Christiaan Hetzner; editing by John Stonestreet)