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The European works council of the Swiss building materials and adhesive manufacturer, Sika, met at their Bad Urach production site (South Germany) on 23 July 2015. The company with 17,000 employees world-wide and controlled by a family holding is to be sold to the French group, Saint Gobain. In an open letter to Saint Gobain's CEO the EWC demanded guarantees that no jobs will be lost for all sites in the first three years following the acquisition as well as no reductions in wages or site-specific social security benefits.
The EWC fears that parts of Sika could be spun-off and sold to compensate for the high cost of the acquisition. The representatives have made it clear that "due to these issues which, for us remain unresolved, we are of the opinion that the best solution for Sika and its employees would be for it to remain an independent Swiss company". Saint Gobain is one of the ten largest French industrial groups with 180,000 employees in 66 countries and has already had a European works council in place since 1988 whose agreement was last updated in May 2009. Sika's EWC was established in 1996.
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