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Job cull starting soon

May 24, 2012

German utility company Eon has announced plans to concentrate accounting activities and human resource management in just two locations. The streamlining will be accompanied by a job cull in the firm's home country.

https://p.dw.com/p/15244
Eon workers in Düsseldorf protesting against looming job cuts
Image: picture-alliance/dpa

German energy giant Eon announced on Thursday that it was planning to make its staff management and accounting operations more efficient. The Düsseldorf-based company said it would concentrate all related activities in two business service centers in Berlin, Germany, and Cluj, Romania.

The company is thus getting serious about earlier announcements to the effect that it would have to cut 11,000 jobs worldwide - 6,000 of them in Germany.

Eon reported on Thursday that the streamlining in human resource planning and accounting would go hand-in-hand with a reduction of the workforce in Germany of initially 1,200 people by 2015, at the latest.

Unions up in arms

The utility firm said the move was required to cut spiraling labor costs, but was also with a view to improving and standardizing in-house workflows.

Germany's biggest public-sector union Verdi voiced its anger at the announcement, saying managers had once again failed to discuss important company developments with union representatives upfront.

"The company is banking on western German employers' unwillingness to move to either of the business service centers to be created," Verdi's Sven Bergelin told the Rheinische Post newspaper. Alluding to the center in the Romanian town of Cluj, Bergelin said Eon would that way be able to lower wages drastically in the process.

hg/gb (AFP, dpa)