"The Opel workers were always the aristocrats of the German labor force," Jaszczyk said. "Usually, we would get wages 20 percent higher than the IG Metall contract. It was normal for us to get salary increases of 8 to 9 percent a year. But it didn't come for free: Opel and GM were making good profits."
At vacation time, workers set off with their families in late-model Opel sedans they helped produce, driving to the beaches of Italy with an extra half-month's salary for their trips.
Hans Gabriel, a worker at the Opel automobile factory in Bochum, Germany, joined fellow employees in a five-day strike in October.
(Michael Sohn -- AP)
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The first tensions came in the mid-1980s as management began installing robots on the shop floor. No one was laid off, but workers who retired were not replaced. By 1985, the workforce was about 14,000.
In 1991, Opel opened a factory in Eisenach, in the former East Germany, where wages were one-third less than those at Bochum, diminishing the company's dependence on its traditional workforce. About the same time, it set up an engine factory in western Hungary.
The sentinel moment came in 1997 when Opel opened a factory in Gliwice, in western Poland.
"People weren't worried at first," Jaszczyk said. "They figured the Polish workers would produce lower quality, older models for sale in the Polish and Russian markets."
By last summer, the workforce at the Gliwice plant had doubled to 1,200 and the German press was filled with rumors of layoffs. In October, GM confirmed the dark talk. At a news conference at the company's European headquarters in Zurich, it said it would transfer the production of 120,000 minivans a year from Bochum to Poland.
"People are angry," said Benjamin Dreher, an assembly line worker. "They feel like they're getting sold out."
At city hall, Mayor Ottilie Scholz frets about the prospect of lost jobs while calling on bureaucrats in Berlin and Brussels to intervene -- how exactly, she isn't sure.
"There's nothing we can do as a city," she said. "This is part of a worldwide phenomenon." The head of the workers council, Dietmar Hahn, sounds resigned to a future in which the workforce is far smaller, if the factory is even open.
"The situation is very difficult," he said. "We've been shown proposals by management that we don't like. There's so much fear. I don't think long-term anymore."
