GM seeks 30 days of temporary stoppages at Spanish site

Lower than expected sales in Europe, Turkey and decision to withdraw from Russia take their toll.

General Motors (GM) Spain has begun negotiations with the works council at its Zaragoza (Spain) site to undertake temporary production stoppages under the ERE scheme, reports elmundo.es. According to the website, these will be undertaken over around 30 days during the second half of the year. The chief executive officer (CEO) of GM Spain, Antonio Cobo was quoted as saying that "markets are not behaving as we predicted." He said amongst this included a Turkish market where it has not achieved the level of sales expected which Europe is growing slower than it had hoped. It also needed to take in to account GM's decision to withdraw Opel from the Russian market.