Saab Automobile's 3,500 workers may compete for as few as four manufacturing jobs in the carmaker's Trollhaettan, Sweden, hometown following a winddown of the General Motors Co. division.
The employment agency serving the southwestern Swedish town of 45,000 people has 40 positions on offer, of which four are in engineering and none are in factories. A closure of Saab will result in 7,000 jobs disappearing in the region, including positions at car-parts suppliers, according to the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth.
GM said on Dec. 18 that it will close Saab after failing to agree on a buyer following two decades of unprofitable ownership. The only other large-scale manufacturer in Trollhaettan is the aerospace unit of truckmaker Volvo AB. The community lies 44 miles (71 kilometers) northeast of Gothenburg, Sweden's second-largest city and home to Volvo's headquarters.
"They say towns always bounce back after plant closings, but in the past we had a big industry that could absorb those who lost their jobs," said Irma Dinamarca Olivares, 57, a quality supervisor who has worked for 35 years on Saab's assembly line. "Now all we have is a college, with no jobs for us, and Volvo Aero isn't enough" to absorb Saab employees.
Spyker NV, the Zeewolde, Netherlands-based maker of the C8 Spyder sports car, was negotiating to buy Saab until GM said last week that talks had collapsed and that the unit would close. Spyker Chief Executive Officer Victor Muller, who has since made a revised bid, said yesterday results of the most recent talks are "hard to predict."
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