The top management of Nordea bank has announced to reduce the total number of jobs by close to 2,000. The Nordic Financial Unions point out, however, that the bank´s decision to reduce staff comes at a time when it has obtained very good results, and that profits in the first half of 2011 went up 21%, and reject the staff cuts. “At a time when Nordea is being a very profitable bank with an excellent reputation in the financial market, the management presses through the New Normal plan and staff reductions at the cost of employees,” says Steinar Nickelsen, President of Union in Nordea, representing over 20,000 Nordea staff. The unions have demanded that Nordea takes every possible step to avoid job losses and focus on re-training and redeployment. Furthermore, they insist that any staff reductions must be on a voluntary basis and packages must be negotiated at national level.
English: http://www.nordicfinancialunions.org/unions-protest-against-staff-reductions ...
This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2011.