News

The Belgian union, ACV-CSC Transcom has responded angrily to an announcement stating that DHL had saved 120 jobs in Belgium.

Kurt Callaerts of ACV-CSC Transcom was commenting on news that the jobs are to be saved at DHL’s aviation capacity sales, global aviation IT and business process aviation departments. They had been due to relocate to other cities across Europe. However, according to DHL, the plans were shelved because of the company’s “strong business growth in 2010.”

At the end of 2009, the company announced that some 800 workers should relocate to Bonn, Leipzig and Prague. Callaerts explains: “Many of the workers didn’t want to move because they had built their lives in Belgium. The unions believed that it was possible and necessity to retain the company’s European headquarters in Belgium. We investigated every possibility and even put together a business plan based on the headquarters staying in Belgium. But DHL didn’t give it a look in and immediately wanted to start negotiations on social agreements to get rid of the workers that didn’t want to move. Only a fraction of the 800 workers moved to one of the new proposed workplaces. The rest left the company.

“The three departments referred to in the announcement are where, in my view, the last diehard workers remain – those who didn’t want to leave on the company’s terms. They are also in departments that are too expensive to move anywhere else. The news reaffirms what I said in 2009: that there is still a need and a future for DHL departments in the centre of Europe.”