The restructuring events database contains factsheets with data on large-scale restructuring events reported in the principal national media and company websites in each EU Member State. This database was created in 2002.
Manufacturing Manufacturing Of Furniture And Other Manufacturing Manufacture Of Furniture 31 - Manufacture of furniture
130 jobs Number of planned job losses
Announcement Date
28 January 2009
Employment effect (start)
9 January 2009
Foreseen end date
1 April 2009
Description
Vulcanus, a company employing mainly people with disabilities in the manual production of wooden furnitures, announced its bankruptcy in early January. The resulting closure of the factory is affecting all of its 130 employees, 100 of them having different disabilities. Following the bankruptcy notice the company's bank froze its assets thus workers have not even received their last salary.
Though the majority of these workers will not require unemployment assistance as they receive disability pension, their return to the labour market might be extremely difficult. The firm has been operating since 1991 and it has 4 production sites in three counties employing more than 200 workers, 65% of them with disabilities. Although, in the beginning, the company was performing jobs outsourced by other firms, its main profile has changed to furniture production since it bought a complete wood production plant.
Vulcanus' main problems started in 2007, with the the government reorganising the system of state subsidies provided for the employment of workers with disabilities. The company's situation worsened with the onset of the global crisis, causing the shrinking of markets.
Eurofound (2009), Vulcanus, Bankruptcy in Hungary, factsheet number 68798, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/68798.
Digitisation and automation technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), can affect working conditions in a variety of ways and their use in the workplace raises a host of new ethical concerns.
The retail banking sector is fertile ground for studying the impacts of digitalisation on work and employment. Financial services are increasingly provided online, without the intermediary of customer-facing institutions.
European labour markets have recovered strongly from COVID-19. By the end of 2021, little more than 18 months after the start of the pandemic, employment rates in the EU were almost at pre-crisis levels.
