On April 9, 2025, Tata Steel announced that it would be overhauling its organization. A major consequence of this is a reduction of 1600 FTEs. That is almost 20% of the current workforce! De Unie is very unpleasantly surprised by the scale of the reorganization.
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No substantiation of reduction
On April 8 at the end of the afternoon, the employer De Unie and her fellow unions about the press release she issued on 9 April at 12:00. We indicated at the time that we found Tata Steel's approach and the approach to communication about it downright unwise.
The management of Tata Steel has chosen to first describe the reorganization (Tata calls this “transformation”) in broad terms. The management has written this down in a request for advice that it submitted to the COR today. The broad terms also state that Tata Steel wants to reduce the number of employees by 1600 FTE.
De Unie does not know what the 1600 fte is based on. Tata Steel has not been able to explain that to us properly either. The main points of the places where the 1600 fte will fall are stated in the request for advice. The request for advice will not be made public until Friday.
The big question for every employee is of course: "Am I affected?" That is not yet included in the request for advice. Tata Steel will continue to work out its reorganization plans from now until the end of May. It wants to submit a detailed request for advice to the COR by mid-June at the latest. Only then will it become clear where exactly the reduction will take place. And even then the COR must give advice on that. So it will only become really clear at the end of July before a Tata Steel employee knows where he really stands.
De Unie believes that you cannot leave employees in uncertainty for so long. We would have found it wiser if Tata Steel had first worked out its plans in more detail and then announced them. This only leads to unrest, uncertainty, frustration and demotivation.
No personal communication?!
De Unie finds it incomprehensible that Tata Steel has chosen to communicate such a strong and important message to you and your colleagues via the Newsflash and a video message. Especially considering the noise in the communication about the reorganization that Tata Steel announced at the end of 2023. It seems that the management of Tata Steel has learned little from how things went at the time. Why not organize a town hall meeting at different places in the company at the same time? That shows commitment to your employees. And offers employees the opportunity to ask questions directly.
Quite a false start to the major operation that Tata Steel wants to carry out!
What now?
The first goal is to get as much argumentation as possible on the announced transformation and reduction. In addition, it is important that De Unie and her fellow unions keep a close line with the COR about Tata Steel's plans. Furthermore, we call on Tata Steel to come up with a detailed elaboration of its plans as soon as possible. As long as there is still uncertainty, De Unie the plans are not there. Whether we find the detailed plans logical depends on that elaboration. That has to come first.
Tata Steel wants to enter into discussions with the unions to agree on a social safety net. In itself, it is good that the employer wants that. But first, as far as we are concerned, there must be much more clarity about which employees exactly will be affected by the reorganization.
In short, there is still too much uncertainty at the moment.
And then we also have the joint members meeting about the new collective labor agreement
On April 1, 2025, we informed our members about the negotiation result we had reached for a new collective labor agreement. We also invited them to the joint members' meeting of the four unions on this subject on Monday, April 14, 2025.
We will hold that joint members meeting on two occasions next Monday. first is at 10:30 am, de second is at 15:30pm. The location is the canteen of the company school (Tata Steel Academy).
It is obvious that we will not only discuss the collective labor agreement next Monday. The reorganization is certainly also a topic of discussion. At the end of the members' meeting, you can only cast your vote on the collective labor agreement physically. If you want to cast your vote, you must be present at one of the two members' meetings on April 14. The following day I will make a newsletter about the progress of the joint members' meetings and the voting results.
Questions or remarks?
Do you have any questions or comments about this newsletter? Please contact the advocate Hans Korver. He can be reached at hans.korver@unie.nl and on 06-5252 2073.
