GAZ Group to Fire 8,000 Workers

The difficult economic times continue in Russia, a country in which automakers are still forced to turn to cost-cutting measures in order to save as much money as possible. GAZ Group is one of the companies that decided to cut the workforce, with the Russian manufacturer preparing to lay off around 8,000 employees for the rest of the year.

This is not the first time when GAZ Group fires people to cope with the recession, as the company turned to a similar decision in July when it let go around 5,800 workers.

"Before now we had been able to avoid mass layoffs," a company spokeswoman was quoted as saying last month, before announcing the new cost-cutting plan.

Meanwhile, GAZ Group is preparing for Opel production which, according to Canadian - Austrian partsmaker Magna, is likely to begin in Rusia in case the company manages to take control over the majority stake in the German brand. Magna International and its partner, the state-controlled Russian bank Sberbank, originally submitted an offer for a 55 percent stake in Opel, a brand which, according to some source, could arrive in Russia through GAZ Group.

"As of today, GAZ Group is the best prepared in terms of technology to take on their (Opel's) production," the spokeswoman said in July. "We have specialists that have been certified by them, by Opel."

"Opel is famous for its plentiful know-how... The goal of the deal is, on the base of its know-how and the possibilities Russia has, to create new know-how and to use it as a base to take a leap into the future," Igor Shuvalov, Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister commented on in June.