The Dismissal of 229 Workers at Karlovac’s Alstom is the Destruction of Knowledge

The dismissal of 229 workers at Karlovac’s Alstom, including 136 graduate engineers, is a destruction of knowledge, which must be opposed by all possible legal means.

This is the stance of the Metalworkers’ Union of Croatia, whose president Vedran Dragičević today opened a press conference in Karlovac, attended by Dragutin Vuljanić, regional commissioner of SMH-IS, Nikola Badovinac, county commissioner of SSSH, and Stjepan Čurilović, commissioner of SMH-IS at Alstom Croatia.

– The planned “restructuring,” which translates to the dismissal of 6,500 employees in Alstom’s European subsidiaries taken over by American General Electric, contradicts the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty, Dragičević believes.

As a positive aspect, Dragičević considers the decision not to close the acquired Karlovac plant of General Electric, but the positivity ends there. Restructuring, says union commissioner Čurilović, has caused unrest among employees, as specific names, deadlines, and conditions for dismissal are still not mentioned; only a list of 229 redundant employees is known.

Our goal, Dragičević continues, is for the factory to survive as it has been an example for Karlovac and for Croatia.

– Alstom has been successful in Southeast Europe thanks to Karlovac’s Alstom, which has strong engineering with much knowledge and intelligence. In this context, we remind of the Lisbon Treaty, which promotes the spread of ideas and knowledge until 2020, and not for us to be merely a service activity for multinational companies, Dragičević said, announcing that a meeting of the European Works Council (EWC) will be held in Brussels on January 29. At this meeting, a strategy to defend against the negative direction from GE will be attempted at the level of European Alstom.

– We feared such a scenario, as we knew that GE has a highly developed engineering structure, and this scenario with an excess of engineers is indeed occurring. We are aware that we cannot directly change GE’s decisions; we know they could have been worse than these, but we will ask management to propose a strategy to reduce the number of dismissals. This proposal from management will be a valuable basis for negotiations in the EWC, Dragičević stated, adding that it will be insisted that the redundancy program complies with Croatian legislation.

As an additional problem, Dragičević highlighted the non-formation of the new Government of the Republic of Croatia, which would be required to protect the interests of the Croatian economy and save the outflow of highly educated personnel during these critical moments.