Germany - Workers at a General Motors (GM) plant in Germany which is at risk of closure were shaken Wednesday by an announcement from the US company that it plans to slash 26,000 jobs outside the United States.

"We heard about it on the radio during the night shift," said one worker at the plant gate as he was heading home. The plant, in the industrial city of Bochum, is a branch factory of Ruesselsheim-based Opel, the GM Europe brand.

"Most of us are wondering if some other company, preferably a German carmaker, would like to take us over," said an assembler, referring to a comment by GM chief executive Rick Wagoner that "we don't have anyone asking to buy Opel."

The assembler said Bochum workers were conscious that cosmetic job cuts at their site were not an option.

"In the good old days, Bochum employed 20,000 people. Today it's only 5,000. Either the plant survives on this scale or it will have to close down. My personal preference would be for BMW to take us over," he said, referring to the German maker of luxury cars.

Opel, which has belonged to GM since 1959, makes cars aimed at plain-tastes motorists, with a focus on smaller cars.

The Bochum plant, which makes Astra station wagons and Zafira family vans, and a factory at Antwerp, Belgium are viewed as the company's least economically-viable European sites.

Five years ago, German unions accepted pay cuts as a means to persuade Opel to reduce a planned layoffs from 10,000 to 8,000 jobs and to promise to keep jobs till 2010, but beyond that date the future is bleak.

Wagoner, who said Tuesday that the restructuring efforts could make GM profitable in two years, was due to meet later Wednesday with Juergen Ruettgers, premier of the German state of North Rhine Westphalia.

Bochum is part of the unemployment-blighted industrial zone in the west of Ruettgers' state. (dpa)