Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Opel workers from plants across Europe joined their colleagues in Antwerp, Belgium, to protest against a possible plant closure in a Magna International Inc.- led reorganization of General Motors Co.’s European unit.

“There will be a New Opel/Vauxhall and it will include Antwerp,” Klaus Franz, head of Opel’s works council, told workers at the rally today. About 5,000 unionized workers from Belgium, Germany, the U.K., Spain and Poland joined the rally, said Armin Schild, an official with Germany’s IG Metall union.

Opel’s reorganization following the division’s planned sale to a partnership of Aurora, Ontario-based Magna and Russia’s OAO Sberbank may lead to the loss of as many as 10,900 jobs in Europe, about a fifth of the workforce, according to a German government report released yesterday. Magna Co-Chief Executive Officer Siegfried Wolf said on Sept. 14 that the Antwerp factory may be shuttered as part of a drive to cut spending on labor by more than $1 billion.

“Every Opel factory has had its round of investments and is ready to build a new model, except for Antwerp,” Vic Heylen, a senior consultant at Flanders’ Center for Automotive Research, said by telephone today. “The only future for the Antwerp plant is to find an investor, possibly from China or India, that’s willing to spend at least 100 million euros ($148 million) to build a new model there.”

Ruesselsheim, Germany-based Opel employs more than 2,500 people at the factory in Antwerp, which builds the Astra compact. In 2008, it produced 132,426 vehicles, or about 9 percent of Opel’s output.

Ruesselsheim Meetings

Aurora, Ontario-based Magna will meet with Opel representatives from Germany tomorrow and the carmaker’s European labor leaders the next day, according to IG Metall. Both meetings will take place in Ruesselsheim, Simone Ebel- Schmidt, a union spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

“Our first demand is no plant closures and no forced redundancies,” Peter Scherrer, general secretary of the European Metalworkers’ Federation, told reporters in Antwerp. “If there is pain to share, then we want a fair share of that pain, a fair distribution of the production volumes.”

The German government plans to provide 3 billion euros in loan guarantees for the Magna-led group’s purchase of Opel. The nation is already supporting Opel with 1.5 billion euros in short-term loans.

Governments in Spain, Belgium and the U.K. are concerned that the carmaker will shift jobs to Germany because of the aid. The European Commission has said it won’t accept government subsidy plans that would require Opel to keep factories open.

Germany plans to syndicate its loans to other countries, probably those that are home to Opel facilities, GM Group Vice President John Smith said on Sept. 10. European regulators are “aware” of negotiations between several governments and Opel, the European Commission said today.

To contact the reporters on this story: Andrew Clapham in Antwerp, Belgium at aclapham@bloomberg.net; John Martens in Brussels at jmartens1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 23, 2009 11:33 EDT