OREANDA-NEWS. St. Petersburg GM plant will start from March 30th the reduction of the bulk of the staff agreed by the parties, by offering seven salaries. Recall that the company will be suspended by the mid-2015.

"For our part we are doing everything, we help in every way. We did not start the procedure of downsizing (by firing) yet, because now we want to go more convenient way for employees. We pay salaries of seven at a time”, - said GM plant. The company representative refused to announce the average size of the salary in the plant”, - says the agency "Prime".

According to the source of agency in the administration of St. Petersburg, now the plant has 919 people. After the completion of conservation work on the plant, a small number of staff will remain in its territory to maintain the company in a state of preservation, the representative of the GM said.

Meanwhile, a team of General Motors plant in St. Petersburg is against layoffs of employees by mutual agreement with the payment of seven salaries and it requires the raising of payments to 12-18 salaries. The deputy chairman of the union of the plant, Roman Kosenko, said about it in the interview with Radio "Ekho Moskvy". According to him, the staff of the enterprise may organize a picket, if there is no compromise with the leadership of the plant.

"We have three requirements. The first – is from 12 to 18 salaries (to pay as part of layoffs to reduce by parties’ agreement). We believe 12 salaries is the minimum that should be offered by GM for employees, because in a situation which is now in Russia, you can search for a job up to a year", - said Mr.Kosenko, who is cited by the agency "Tass”. So far, he said, the staff had not received official notice of termination by agreement of the parties and work in idle mode, by receiving two-thirds of the average wage. The average salary of employees of GM is 35-37 thousand rubles, he said.

The second requirement of employees – is to train employees of the plant to another specialty, which would provide income not lower than the current one. "The third requirement - if the plant will go, the first in the plant should return workers who went the last”, - said the deputy chairman of the union.

Recall on March 18th, the US General Motors has announced about the major review of plans for the Russian market, it declined from almost all of its production sites – it announced the closure of the plant in St. Petersburg, it stopped the contract assembly at the facilities of Kaliningrad "Avtotor" and Nizhny Novgorod GAZ and it has left only the joint venture with AvtoVAZ - GM-AvtoVAZ. The company also announced the discontinuation of the Opel brand in the Russian market and all popular models of the brand Chevrolet, by retaining only the premium model of this brand in the market, as well as the brand Cadillac. The plant continues to assemble by SKD- method Cadillac cars, as well as the Chevrolet Tahoe and Chevrolet Captiva.