Hans Westerhuis is voorzitter van de Europese Ondernemingsraad van ABN Amro

De Europese Ondernemingsraad ABN AMRO (ESC) heeft afgelopen donderdag uitgebreid gesproken met het Consortium. In dit gesprek heeft de ESC gevraagd of het Consortium bereid was garanties voor alle huidige medewerkers van ABN AMRO te geven.

Het Consortium heeft de ESC toegezegd, dat alle bestaande ABN AMRO-regelingen met betrekking tot de gevolgen van boventalligheid voor minimaal 2 jaar blijven bestaan en zelfs overweegt om deze periode te verlengen.De ESC is zeer tevreden met deze toezegging, die veel verder gaat dan detot nu toe bestaande afspraken en voor onze collega’s wereldwijd van groot belang zijn.

De door het Consortium geaccordeerde tekst (Engels) is bijgevoegd.

The ESC sought some clarification from the Consortium on the way in which

they intend to handle the social consequences of the proposed take-over.

The Consortium have identified 10 people principles, which encompass the

values with which they will approach the orderly reorganisation of ABN

AMRO.

These principles state amongst other things that it is the consortium

banks’ firm intention that job losses will be managed through voluntary

measures,

including natural turnover, redeployment and voluntary redundancy. In the

Netherlands there is a stronger commitment that there will be no forced

dismissals in the Netherlands, although it is also stated that departures

through the social plan will not be considered as forced dismissals. More

generally there is also the commitment that all existing Social Plans and

Collective Labour Agreements will be honoured.

When the ESC asked if the Consortium would give a firm undertaking that in

the event of someone being made redundant, voluntarily or otherwise, it

would be with a package (including outplacement support etc) no worse than

that they would have received under current ABN AMRO conditions we had an

interesting and comforting answer. It was that they were happy to guarantee

that, and would do so, but in certain areas they might offer something

better. For example, in line with the Barclays commitment, the ESC asked

for the guarantee to be in place for two years. The answer was that they

might

want to extend the guarantee beyond that.

The commitment that the Consortium were willing to make was that redundancy

policies currently in place will remain in place for at least 2 years as

per

the People Principle commitment to respect existing Social Plans and

Collective Labour Agreements.

Neil Roden gave a further example that in previous acquisitions RBS had

offered people terms and conditions and they could choose whether to accept

the new terms and conditions or remain on their existing terms. It was

recognised that we are at an early stage in the process and the commitment

remains to continue ongoing dialogue with the representative bodies.

End

Dit verhaal is geplaatst op zaterdag 21 juli 2007 om 20:37 uur.