Restructuring events
European Restructuring Monitor (ERM)
The restructuring events database contains factsheets with data on large-scale restructuring events reported in the principal national media and company websites in each EU Member State. This database was created in 2002.
The Norwegian based group Norske Skog, a global manufacturer of lightweight, coated and uncoated newsprint and magazine paper, has announced that it is to cut 500 to 600 jobs world-wide. It is estimated that at the Czech and the Korean mills around 400 workers will lose their jobs altogether, while around 130 will be made redundant at the Norwegian mill at Follum. As of March 2008, there is no information on when the job losses will be implemented by. Norske Skog has currently 18 paper mills around the world employing 8000 workers.
An increasingly weak market has resulted in temporary production shutdowns at several Norske Skog mills in recent years. At the same time, the continued excess capacity has resulted in a weak price trend for the company's products. On 12 March the corporate assembly sanctioned the Board recommendation of 4 March to shut down a total newsprint production capacity of 450,000 tonnes. This amounts to about seven per cent of the company's total global production capacity, and includes the following mills/paper machines: Permanent shutdown of Norske Skog Steti (Czekhia), indefinite shutdown of PM2 at Norske Skog Follum (Norway), and indefinite shutdown of Norske Skog Cheongwon (Korea). The timing of the individual shutdowns will be decided later by the board.
The Norwegian unions protested against the decision to close Follum. Instead they suggested altering the production to other sorts of paper, for example booking paper. At the meeting of the corporate assembly around 100 workers participated in a demonstration, but they only managed to get support from one of the stock holders representatives in addition to the 6 employee representatives.
After the meeting the union leader Stein-Roar Eriksen said to the media that the management and the coroprate assembly had deceived Follum. He also said that the union had to rethink what to do next, and that there has to be changes in the management, board and coroporate assembly.
Eurofound (2008), Norske Skog, Internal restructuring in World, factsheet number 66459, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://dev.eurofound.europa.eu/restructuring-events/detail/66459.
This working paper offers a comprehensive methodological overview of the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) databases. Even though the methodology has not changed over time, new categories have been added, and the way it has been used by researchers and policymakers...
This Eurofound research paper explores key trends in restructuring in recent years, highlighting the companies that announced the largest job losses and job gains in the EU. It builds on an analysis of company announcements recorded in Eurofound’s European Restructuring...
In 2023, thousands of workers in big tech lost their jobs. Meta, Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Salesforce had been considered to offer good and secure jobs up to this point. Giants of the information and communication technology (ICT) sector,...
In 2024, the automotive sector in the EU came to the fore in public and policy discussions. The focus was on the slowdown in electric vehicle (EV) sales, rising global competition, belated investments in new technologies, and the potential closure...
The more employee monitoring resembles surveillance – with its systematic, continuous and detailed tracking of employees' activities, behaviours or communications – the greater the potential for infringement of both privacy and data protection rights. Although the EU General Data Protection...
Since 2013, Eurofound's ERM database on restructuring-related legislation has been documenting regulatory developments in the Member States of the European Union and Norway which are explicitly or implicitly linked to anticipating and managing change. The most recent update to the...
