News

On January 12, the Swedish telecom operator Telia Sonera announced that 1.200 workers in Sweden would be made redundant. "We have reached our saving objectives but we cannot guarantee that no further layoffs will come”, said the Telia Head of Communications to the Swedish daily newspaper DN.



"We could never have dreamt that the there would be so many redundancies and we can’t see any relevance in this figure”, said Berith Westman, President of UNI’s Swedish affiliate Unionen at Telia Sonera.



Westman already considers that the organization is anorectic and can’t see how the operations can be maintained in a commercial and effective manner after such huge layoffs. She also criticized the way in which the redundancies were presented on Monday afternoon without giving the unions a chance to prepare a crises package for members. “Furthermore, the company has no preparedness on how to deal with this, which I think shows a lack of sensibility on part of the company”, continued Westman. We live in times of crisis but the company’s financial situation continues to be good so most people did not think that so many as 1200 jobs would go”, she said.



Elof Isaksson, Presidet of another UNI affiliate Seko’s local union at Telia is not so harsh in his criticism but neither can he understand how the company is going to be able to maintain its operations after such important personnel reductions. ”We have to engage in detailed negotiations and I hope that we will be able to draw the conclusion that the extent of the layoffs was exaggerated”, he said.



The employment security agreement at TeliaSonera expired in September. Since then, it has been a hot issue for the major unions at TeliaSonera to renew the agreement. The trade unions failed to agree on the company's bid for a new security agreement. UNI’s other affiliate; Seko was ready to accept, while Unionen said no. And because of the lack of a restructuring agreement, the normal period of notice applies.



Unionen called for negotiations to discuss TeliaSonera's budget and it was only at the last agenda item that the company raised the proposed redundancies. ”We believe that the company already has met necessary saving requirements and we cannot see any reason for cutting 1200 jobs. We think the company should have called for proper negotiations where we would have gone through the staffing plan in order to evaluate any redundancies”, says Berith Westman. "At the same time as we learned about the redundancies the company published a press release. We find that unacceptable. We did not receive any information on which locations or what categories would be concerned and yet we were supposed to answer our members’ questions”.



SEKO’s President, Janne Ruden, criticized the company. “I was informed through the media. It seems to be trendy. All big companies make announcements of layofffs so TeliaSonera has to follow. I think this is very bad timing, " he said.



Information in Swedish:

http://nyhetskanalen.se/1.803810/2009/01/12/telia_storvarslar_1_200_ska_bort



http://www.dagensmedia.se/mallar/dagensmedia_mall.asp?version=210342