Wholesale giant METRO Cash & Carry is closing down its last two remaining stores at locations in Aarhus and Glostrup and dismissing 300 employees. According to the company, a deal with Euro Cater, which could have saved the employees' jobs, fell through. Metro that opened its first store in Glostrup in 1971 announced in September 2014 it would close its five Danish stores because they were no longer profitable. Almost simultaneously, the Danish arm of the company chain Build-A-Bear, which gives customers the chance to put together their own teddy bear, has gone bankrupt. The company’s Danish website has gone offline and all of its shops, with the exception of the one next to Tivoli, have closed down. At its height in 2010, the chain had ten shops, making it the fourth biggest Build-A-Bear country at that time in terms of the number of retail locations. At the time of the bankruptcy, a total of five shops was still open.
English: http://cphpost.dk/news/metro-wholesalers-laying-off-300-employees.11838.html
http://cphpost.dk/news/bear-market-american-retailer-wiped-out-in-denmark.11825.html
For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.