Over the last few days, there have been several reports in the press about the compulsory redundancies that Stadtwerke Gießen AG (SWG) has issued to a small number of its bus drivers. The dismissals have also caused a stir in politics. SPD city association chairman Gerhard Merz and deputy parliamentary group chairman Johannes Loheide accused the municipal utilities of an "outright breach of contract" of the personnel transfer agreement concluded in the course of the AG conversion. "Dismissals for operational reasons are never pleasant. Especially not for us, as this is the first time we have had to make such redundancies. That is why it is particularly important to us to set the record straight about how these dismissals came about. This is because some of the facts have been misrepresented in previous reports. The accusations from the political side are also not correct. We have therefore decided to make a correction," said SWG CEO Manfred Siekmann at yesterday's press conference.
SWG are not in breach of contract: Staff transfer agreement does not generally rule out redundancies for operational reasons
A staff transfer agreement was concluded in February 2001 as part of the transformation of Stadtwerke Gießen from a municipally owned company into a public limited company. This collective agreement was intended to protect all SWG employees from losing their jobs in the event of insolvency under private law as a result of the change in legal form. The staff transfer agreement only excludes redundancies for operational reasons for this limited area of application until the end of 2007. Dismissals for operational reasons for other reasons (and this is the case here) are expressly not affected by this. Incidentally, the staff transfer agreement does not apply to three of the five terminated drivers anyway, as they were not yet employed by SWG at the time the agreement was concluded.
Trigger for dismissals:
Five bus drivers' actions for cancellation of their contracts
Due to the cost pressure imposed by European and Hessian authorities, SWG intensified its efforts to cut costs in the personnel and organisational areas as early as 2001. In the personnel area, only temporary appointments were made in order to realise savings in the future. In the period from January to May 2006, the determination of personnel requirements for local transport revealed that there was a surplus of eight drivers. The reasons for this surplus included a change to the timetable in December 2005 and the fact that the number of overtime hours worked by staff had been falling continuously for years. This overstaffing was expressly intended to be compensated for without dismissals, namely through the expiry of fixed-term contracts and partial retirement arrangements. five bus drivers did not accept the expiry of the contracts agreed in the employment contracts at the end of June and sued for the continued validity of their contracts. These actions for termination were upheld at first instance and SWG has lodged an appeal with the Regional Labour Court (LAG). Until a decision is made by the LAG, an unplanned surplus of five drivers would have remained. Against the backdrop of the existing cost pressure, SWG was therefore forced to issue five redundancy notices as a substitute. "A company cannot make such redundancies to just any employees at its own discretion; a social selection process must be carried out. Naturally, we have complied with this," says Management Board member Reinhard Paul on the procedure. "We had to include all SWG bus drivers in this social selection. As a result, two of the people who had their contracts terminated were left out of the group. In their place, we had to dismiss two of our bus drivers with permanent contracts." In total, SWG therefore cancelled the contracts of five bus drivers and not ten as stated.
Offer of continued employment with MIT.BUS not a cost-cutting measure
Company spokesperson Ina Weller on the accusation that SWG only used the dismissals to employ expensive drivers more cheaply at its local transport subsidiary MIT.BUS GmbH: "We only decided to offer the employees affected by the dismissals employment at our subsidiary MIT.BUS GmbH as a compromise solution in the course of the court negotiations on the lawsuits for the cancellation of their contracts. This was only possible for two employment relationships because two fixed-term contracts had expired at MIT.BUS and these jobs were due to be refilled. Contrary to what was reported in the press, none of those dismissed took up the offer."
Overtime only accrued after the dismissals
In the press reports to date, the necessity of the redundancies has been questioned with reference to the "mass of overtime" that the drivers have to work. Ina Weller comments: "There can be no question of a mass of overtime. Quite the opposite: as recently as May, we recorded a historic low in overtime. It was only after we made the two permanent employees redundant that our drivers' absenteeism rose sharply and with it the amount of overtime they had to work."
SWG would have liked to have avoided these redundancies
SWG CEO Manfred Siekmann: "You can believe me: we would have liked to have avoided these redundancies out of consideration for our employees, but also out of consideration for the good reputation of our company. And according to our original plan, the necessary staff reductions could have been realised in a socially responsible manner, i.e. without redundancies. Unfortunately, however, the developments described above left us with no other choice."