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At the EWC Meeting held on 20 January 2009, Rio Tinto management announced 2,000 job cuts in Europe, including 750 in the United Kingdom, 697 in France and some 600 in the other European countries.
Press release by the employee representatives on the Rio Tinto European Works Council.
The employee representatives on the EWC accuse management of deliberately understating the real impact of this plan on jobs – not only those of the company’s workforce but also those of sub-contractors and service providers.
In view of the company’s 2008 profits of $10 billion and its 2009 profit forecast of $6 billion, the employee representatives roundly condemn this plan, which places the full burden of the mistakes made by the Group’s top managers and the consequences of speculative takeover bids on the employees alone, in particular those who lack job security and are therefore the most vulnerable. The same top managers who are responsible for the current situation are protecting themselves and granting themselves ever more exorbitant privileges, while continuing to apply the same policies, which will produce the same results: the destruction of jobs!!
While employees are being kicked out of their jobs, the company continues to earn billions of dollars in profits, for the purpose of safeguarding, at all costs, shareholders’ dividends!!!
The employee representatives on the EWC also condemn the lack of precise information regarding the real impact on employment, as well as the total absence of information about the effects of cuts in capital expenditure and operating costs on the Group’s European businesses.
They also emphasise that this plan is completely devoid of industrial vision and real economic justification. Within the next few days, the EWC will be issuing demands for additional and precise information for the purposes of the ensuing procedure.
The employee representatives on the EWC will be discussing with Group employees in all European countries the ways to mount a concerted challenge to these decisions, as their effect can only be to destroy jobs, undermine employees’ living and working conditions and safety and threaten the medium and long-term viability of the Rio Tinto Group’s businesses.
Paris, 21 January 2009
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