Restructuring events
European Restructuring Monitor (ERM)
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.
The American multinational company IBM has confirmed the reduction of 334 employees in the Netherlands to be realised by the end of 2016. The activities, which have not been further specified, will be moved to India, where labour costs are lower. The Dutch central works council had already been notified of pending redundancies adding up to 800 job losses in March 2016, although the 334 job losses, primarily involuntary dismissals, are the first of those to be confirmed. Concrete information on who will be dismissed is to follow on 1 September 2016. IBM has invited and met with the trade unions for discussions, but one of the smaller Dutch trade unions, De Unie, is critical of IBM's willingness to involve trade unions in negotiating a social plan for the reduced employees and has criticised the social plan already negotiated with the works council. De Unie states that the benefits in which it foresees for involuntarily dismissed employees are hardly an improvement on the benefits negotiated previously for employees leaving voluntarily, and is especially critical of the dismissed employee's loss of rights negotiated in the plan in case the employee makes use of the legal right to question the dismissal with the Public Employment Agency. The reductions seem to fall in a major restructuring effort worldwide, particularly felt in the US and Western Europe.
Eurofound (2016), IBM, Offshoring/Delocalisation in Netherlands, factsheet number 88169, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://apps.eurofound.europa.eu/restructuring-events/detail/88169.