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H&M wants to lay off 800 employees

2021-01-26T12:43:48.185Z


Fashion discounter H&M has to lay off employees because of the corona crisis. Socially acceptable, as the company insures. The first lists that go around suggest something else.


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Photo: Axel Heimken / DPA

The Swedish fashion retailer Hennes & Mauritz wants to cut around 800 jobs in Germany.

That corresponds to around five percent of all employees of the company in Germany, said a company spokeswoman.

H&M is trying to achieve the downsizing through a volunteer program in order to avoid redundancies.

"If the number of volunteers in this program is insufficient, the decision will be made on a social selection," announced the company.

According to a report by "Business Insider", the company management submitted a volunteer program to the general works council in which employees on parental leave are listed as a predestined group for layoffs.

Apparently because they cannot work on the high-turnover evening times or on Saturdays.

The employees in question are protected against dismissal through parental leave, but they can be dismissed once back at work.

The Ver.di trade union criticizes the Swedish company's actions.

"H&M Germany boss Thorsten Mindermann behaves like a corporate patriarch who makes decisions over the heads of women," said Cosimo-Damiano Quinto from the Ver.di federal specialist group for retail to the "Business Insider".

»The Basic Law states in no uncertain terms: Every mother is entitled to the protection and care of the community.

Ownership therefore obliges companies like H&M to enable women on parental leave and working mothers to have family-friendly working hours instead of using their double burden as a weakness and trying to put them on the street. "

The corona crisis had also hit the fashion giant hard.

In the financial year from December 2019 to November 2020, the H&M Group's net sales fell by 18 percent to around 187 billion Swedish kronor (around 18.3 billion euros).

The group had already announced in October that it wanted to thin out its branch network

Icon: The mirror

hej / dpa

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2021-01-26

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