DHL to shift European HQ from Belgium to Germany with loss of up to 788 jobs
Associated Press
11/26/09 9:50 AM PST
BRUSSELS — DHL Express said Thursday it plans to shift its European headquarters from Belgium to Germany and the Czech Republic with the loss of up to 788 jobs in Brussels.
The company said in a statement that those jobs would be "potentially affected" as the shipper, owned by German mail and logistics company Deutsche Post AG, moves head office functions to Bonn or Leipzig airport and its IT data center to Prague.
"At this time the business must leverage its capabilities by consolidating some of its core functions in order to benefit from close cooperation with other DHL business units," it said.
It is now negotiating the total amount of job losses with local unions and said the cuts would take place step by step over two years and workers would be offered positions at the new locations.
Employees told local television that it would be unrealistic to move to another country to keep their jobs. Marie Vanherck told Een news that she and her husband both worked for the company and her department "is not totally impacted, but his is."
Rik Vermeersch of the BBTK trade union reacted angrily to the announcement, saying workers had understood that the company would reconsider the move it first mooted in 2004, two years after Deutsche Post bought U.S.-based DHL.
DHL's Belgian spokesman Tim Claessens refused to confirm a report in newspaper De Standaard that quoted workers' representatives as saying some 883 jobs would be shed in the country: 524 at DHL Express, 325 at the DHL Aviation sorting center and 34 at the company's airline European Air Transport.
Deutsche Post made a loss of euro83 million ($123 million) in the third quarter, the result of a steep fall in revenue during the downturn and the bankruptcy of Arcandor AG, which owned one of Germany's biggest mail order companies.
DHL employs around 5,478 people in Belgium and about 300,000 worldwide.
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