MADRID (AP) -- Workers at an Opel car plant in Spain will go on strike for four days to protest job cuts planned by prospective new owner Magna International Inc., a union leader said Tuesday.
The stoppages will be staged Oct. 28 and 30 and Nov. 3 and 5, said Jose Juan Arceiz, leader of a committee representing workers at the plant near Zaragoza in northeastern Spain.
"All production will be halted on those four days," Arceiz told the AP.
The Zaragoza plant employs 7,500 people. Magna International Inc has said it wants to lay off 1,350 workers and shift part of the factory's production to Germany as part of its takeover of Opel from General Motors Co.
Magna made a revised restructuring proposal Friday and union negotiators said Monday they had rejected it as insufficient.
"Right now the negotiations are at a standstill," said Arceiz.
Arceiz said that besides the layoff plans, there were also sticking points over a Magna offer to let the Zaragoza plant retain 72 percent of Opel's compact car production after 2013.
Opel and sister brand Vauxhall employ some 49,000 people in Europe -- about half of them in Germany -- and have plants in countries including Spain, Poland and Britain.
Magna has said some 10,500 jobs could be cut overall, 4,500 of them in Germany, where all four Opel plants would remain open.
The consortium of Magna and Russian bank Sberbank beat a rival bid for Opel by Brussels-based investment firm RHJ International.
Under the deal, the consortium would take a 55-percent stake in Opel, with General Motors keeping 35 percent and 10 percent going to employees.
But Belgium, where Opel's Antwerp factory faces likely closure, has asked the European Commission to investigate the deal amid concern that Germany may have sought to protect its own plants at the cost of others.