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 Dutch multinational company Boskalis, which provides dredging, marine services and land infrastructure services, has announced a worldwide job loss of 650 jobs, of which 150 will be in the Netherlands. Boskalis has suffered from a drop in demand due to the oil and gas crisis and has therefore decided to take 24 vessels among its dredging and offshore energy divisions out of service in the next two years, leading to job losses among the vessels' personnel. Boskalis has expressed the hope that reductions will occur through natural attrition and redeployment, but compulsory reductions are not ruled out. The main Dutch trade union FNV had earlier urged Boskalis to cut costs without compulsory redundancies after Boskalis had warned about redundancies at the presentation of the annual report several months earlier, arguing that Boskalis' financial position would allow for it, but Boskalis has decided otherwise and has now invited the trade unions to discuss a social plan. Boskalis has activities in 75 countries, operates some 1,000 vessels and employs some 8,200 persons worldwide.
Updated 24/02/2017: The union FNV/ Nautilus and Boskalis management are in a state of conflict after accusations by FNV that Boskalis is re-hiring through a temporary work agency, on significantly lower pay, staff that had earlier been made redundant . Boskalis admits this may happen coincidentally if former employees have signed up with an agency providing personnel for temporary peaks at Boskalis, but denies that it occurs in a structural way. Moreover, the redundancy package that had been negotiated earlier was signed only by the smaller union CNV, and not by FNV/ Nautilus, which claims to organise four to five times as many employees at Boskalis as CNV.
Eurofound (2016), Boskalis, Internal restructuring in Netherlands, factsheet number 88167, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://dev.eurofound.europa.eu/restructuring-events/detail/88167.
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